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MOON-FAC E 

AND OTHER STORIES 


BY 

JACK LONDON 

AUTHOR OF “THE CALL OF THE WILD,” “PEOPLE 
OF THE ABYSS,” ETC., ETC. 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

LONDON : MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd. 

1906 


All rights reserved 


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Copyright, 1906, 

By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 


Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1906. 



Nortocob -IfJreag 

J. S. Cushing & Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. 
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 


MOON-FACE 


AND OTHER STORIES 


WORKS OF JACK LONDON 

* 

The Game 

The Sea-Wolf 

The Call of the Wild 

The Children of the Frost 

People of the Abyss 

The Faith of Men and Other Stories 

War of the Classes 

The Kempton-Wace Letters 

Tales of the Fish Patrol 

Moon-Face and Other Stories 

White Fang 

* 


PUBLISHED BY 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 


Contents 


PAGE 


Moon-Face 

• 

• 

• 

• 

. i 

The Leopard Man’s Story . 

• 

• 


• 

• *5 

Local Color 

. 



. 

• 25 

Amateur Night . 

• 



• 

• 57 

The Minions of Midas 

• 



• 

. 87 

The Shadow and the Flash . 

• 



. 

• 

All Gold Canyon 

• 



• 

. 147 

Planchette 







▼ 










MOON-FACE 





























4 














1 1 1 

























































i ■ 


> * 


* 1 * 




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MOON-FACE* 


J OHN CLAVERHOUSE was a moon-faced 
man. You know the kind, cheek-bones wide 
apart, chin and forehead melting into the 
cheeks to complete the perfect round, and the 
nose, broad and pudgy, equidistant from the cir- 
cumference, flattened against the very centre of the 
face like a dough-ball upon the ceiling. Perhaps 
that is why I hated him, for truly he had become 
an offence to my eyes, and I believed the earth 
to be cumbered with his presence. Perhaps my 
mother may have been superstitious of the moon 
and looked upon it over the wrong shoulder at the 
wrong time. 

Be that as it may, I hated John Claverhouse. 
Not that he had done me what society would con- 
sider a wrong or an ill turn. Far from it. The 
evil was of a deeper, subtler sort; so elusive, so 
intangible, as to defy clear, definite analysis in 


* Copyright, 1902, by The Argonaut Publishing Company. 

3 


4 


MOON-FACE 


words. We all experience such things at some 
period in our lives. For the first time we see a 
certain individual, one who the very instant be- 
fore we did not dream existed; and yet, at the 
first moment of meeting, we say : “ I do not like that 
man.” Why do we not like him ? Ah, we do not 
know why; we know only that we do not. We 
have taken a dislike, that is all. And so I with John 
Claverhouse. 

What right had such a man to be happy? Yet 
he was an optimist. He was always gleeful and 
laughing. All things were always all right, curse 
him ! Ah ! how it grated on my soul that he should 
be so happy! Other men could laugh, and it did 
not bother me. I even used to laugh myself — 
before I met John Claverhouse. 

But his laugh ! It irritated me, maddened me, 
as nothing else under the sun could irritate or 
madden me. It haunted me, gripped hold of me, 
and would not let me go. It was a huge, Gargan- 
tuan laugh. Waking or sleeping it was always with 
me, whirring and jarring across my heart-strings 
like an enormous rasp. At break of day 
it came whooping across the fields to spoil my 


MOON-FACE 


5 


pleasant morning revery. Under the aching noon- 
day glare, when the green things drooped and 
the birds withdrew to the depths of the forest, and 
all nature drowsed, his great “Ha! ha!” and “Ho! 
ho!” rose up to the sky and challenged the sun. 
And at black midnight, from the lonely cross-roads 
where he turned from town into his own place, came 
his plaguey cachinnations to rouse me from my sleep 
and make me writhe and clench my nails into my 
palms. 

I went forth privily in the night-time, and turned 
his cattle into his fields, and in the morning heard 
his whooping laugh as he drove them out again. 
“It is nothing,” he said; “the poor, dumb beasties 
are not to be blamed for straying into fatter pas- 
tures.” 

He had a dog he called “Mars,” a big, splendid 
brute, part deer-hound and part blood-hound, and 
resembling both. Mars was a great delight to him, 
and they were always together. But I bided my 
time, and one day, when opportunity was ripe, lured 
the animal away and settled for him with strychnine 
and beefsteak. It made positively no impression on 
John Claverhouse. His laugh was as hearty and 


6 


MOON-FACE 


frequent as ever, and his face as much like the full 
moon as it always had been. 

Then I set fire to his haystacks and his barn. 
But the next morning, being Sunday, he went forth 
blithe and cheerful. 

“ Where are you going ?” I asked him, as he went 
by the cross-roads. 

“Trout,” he said, and his face beamed like a full 
moon. “I just dote on trout.” 

Was there ever such an impossible man ! His 
whole harvest had gone up in his haystacks and 
barn. It was uninsured, I knew. And yet, in the 
face of famine and the rigorous winter, he went out 
gayly in quest of a mess of trout, forsooth, because 
he “doted” on them! Had gloom but rested, no 
matter how lightly, on his brow, or had his bovine 
countenance grown long and serious and less like 
the moon, or had he removed that smile but once 
from off his face, I am sure I could have forgiven 
him for existing. But no, he grew only more cheer- 
ful under misfortune. 

I insulted him. He looked at me in slow and 
smiling surprise. 

“I fight you? Why?” he asked slowly. And 


I 


MOON-FACE 


7 


then he laughed. “You are so funny! Ho! ho! 
You’ll be the death of me ! He ! he ! he ! Oh ! Ho 
ho! ho!” 

What would you? It was past endurance. By 
the blood of Judas, how I hated him ! Then there 
was that name — Claverhouse ! What a name ! 
Wasn’t it absurd ? Claverhouse ! Merciful heaven, 
why Claverhouse ? Again and again I asked myself 
that question. I should not have minded Smith, 
or Brown, or Jones — but Claverhouse! I leave it 
to you. Repeat it to yourself — Claverhouse. Just 
listen to the ridiculous sound of it — Claverhouse ! 
Should a man live with such a name ? I ask of you. 
“No,” you say. And “No” said I. 

But I bethought me of his mortgage. What of 
his crops and barn destroyed, I knew he would be 
unable to meet it. So I got a shrewd, close-mouthed, 
tight-fisted money-lender to get the mortgage trans- 
ferred to him. I did not appear, but through this 
agent I forced the foreclosure, and but few days 
(no more, believe me, than the law allowed) were 
given John Claverhouse to remove his goods and 
chattels from the premises. Then I strolled down 
to see how he took it, for he had lived there upward 


8 


MOON-FACE 


of twenty years. But he met me with his saucer- 
eyes twinkling, and the light glowing and spreading 
in his face till it was as a full-risen moon. 

“Ha! ha! ha!” he laughed. “The funniest 
tike, that youngster of mine ! Did you ever hear the 
like? Let me tell you. He was down playing by 
the edge of the river when a piece of the bank caved 
in and splashed him. ‘O papa!’ he cried; ‘a great 
big puddle flewed up and hit me/” 

He stopped and waited for me to join him in his 
infernal glee. 

“I don’t see any laugh in it,” I said shortly, and 
I know my face went sour. 

He regarded me with wonderment, and then came 
the damnable light, glowing and spreading, as I have 
described it, till his face shone soft and warm, like 
the summer moon, and then the laugh — “Ha ! ha ! 
That’s funny ! You don’t see it, eh ? He ! he ! 
Ho ! ho ! ho ! He doesn’t see it ! Why, look here. 
You know a puddle — ” 

But I turned on my heel and left him. That was 
the last. I could stand it no longer. The thing 
must end right there, I thought, curse him ! The 
earth should be quit of him. And as I went over the 


MOON-FACE 


9 


hill, I could hear his monstrous laugh reverberating 
against the sky. 

Now, I pride myself on doing things neatly, and 
when I resolved to kill John Claverhouse I had it 
in mind to do so in such fashion that I should not 
look back upon it and feel ashamed. I hate bungling, 
and I hate brutality. To me there is something 
repugnant in merely striking a man with one’s naked 
fist — faugh ! it is sickening ! So, to shoot, or stab, 
or club John Claverhouse (oh, that name !) did not 
appeal to me. And not only was I impelled to do 
it neatly and artistically, but also in such manner 
that not the slightest possible suspicion could be 
directed against me. 

To this end I bent my intellect, and, after a week 
of profound incubation, I hatched the scheme. 
Then I set to work. I bought a water spaniel 
bitch, five months old, and devoted my whole 
attention to her training. Had any one spied upon 
me, they would have remarked that this train- 
ing consisted entirely of one thing — retrieving. I 
taught the dog, which I called “Bellona,” to fetch 
sticks I threw into the water, and not only to fetch, 
but to fetch at once, without mouthing or playing 


IO 


MOON-FACE 


with them. The point was that she was to stop for 
nothing, but to deliver the stick in all haste. I 
made a practice of running away and leaving her 
to chase me, with the stick in her mouth, till she 
caught me. She was a bright animal, and took to 
the game with such eagerness that I was soon 
content. 

After that, at the first casual opportunity, I pre- 
sented Bellona to John Claverhouse. I knew what 
I was about, for I was aware of a little weakness of 
his, and of a little private sinning of which he was 
regularly and inveterately guilty. 

“No,” he said when I placed the end of the rope 
in his hand. “No, you don’t mean it.” And his 
mouth opened wide and he grinned all over his 
damnable moon-face. 

“I — I kind of thought, somehow, you didn’t 
like me,” he explained. “Wasn’t it funny for me 
to make such a mistake?” And at the thought he 
held his sides with laughter. 

“What is her name ?” he managed to ask between 
paroxysms. 

“Bellona,” I said. 

“He! he!” he tittered. “What a funny name!” 


MOON-FACE 


ii 


I gritted my teeth, for his mirth put them on edge, 
and snapped out between them, “She was the wife 
of Mars, you know.” 

Then the light of the full moon began to suffuse 
his face, until he exploded with: “That was my 
other dog. Well, I guess she’s a widow now. Oh ! 
Ho! ho! E! he! he! Ho !” he whooped after me, 
and I turned and fled swiftly over the hill. 

The week passed by, and on Saturday evening 
I said to him, “You go away Monday, don’t 
you?” 

He nodded his head and grinned. 

“Then you won’t have another chance to get a 
mess of those trout you just ‘dote’ on.” 

But he did not notice the sneer. “Oh, I don’t 
know,” he chuckled. “I’m going up to-morrow to 
try pretty hard.” 

Thus was assurance made doubly sure, and I 
went back to my house hugging myself with 
rapture. 

Early next morning I saw him go by with a dip- 
net and gunnysack, and Bellona trotting at his heels. 
I knew where he was bound, and cut out by the back 
pasture and climbed through the underbrush to the 


12 


MOON-FACE 


top of the mountain. Keeping carefully out of sight, 
I followed the crest along for a couple of miles to a 
natural amphitheatre in the hills, where the little 
river raced down out of a gorge and stopped for 
breath in a large and placid rock-bound pool. That 
was the spot ! I sat down on the croup of the 
mountain, where I could see all that occurred, and 
lighted my pipe. 

Ere many minutes had passed, John Claverhouse 
came plodding up the bed of the stream. Bellona 
was ambling about him, and they were in high 
feather, her short, snappy barks mingling with his 
deeper chest-notes. Arrived at the pool, he threw 
down the dip-net and sack, and drew from his hip- 
pocket what looked like a large, fat candle. But I 
knew it to be a stick of “ giant for such was his 
method of catching trout. He dynamited them. 
He attached the fuse by wrapping the “giant” 
tightly in a piece of cotton. Then he ignited the 
fuse and tossed the explosive into the pool. 

Like a flash, Bellona was into the pool after it. 
I could have shrieked aloud for joy. Claver- 
house yelled at her, but without avail. He pelted 
her with clods and rocks, but she swam steadily on 


MOON-FACE 


13 


till she got the stick of “giant” in her mouth, when 
she whirled about and headed for shore. Then, 
for the first time, he realized his danger, and started 
to run. As foreseen and planned by me, she made 
the bank and took out after him. Oh, I tell you, it 
was great ! As I have said, the pool lay in a sort 
of amphitheatre. Above and below, the stream 
could be crossed on stepping-stones. And around 
and around, up and down and across the stones, 
raced Claverhouse and Bellona. I could never 
have believed that such an ungainly man could run 
so fast. But run he did, Bellona hot-footed after 
him, and gaining. And then, just as she caught up, 
he in full stride, and she leaping with nose at his 
knee, there was a sudden flash, a burst of smoke, 
a terrific detonation, and where man and dog 
had been the instant before there was naught to be 
seen but a big hole in the ground. 

“Death from accident while engaged in illegal 
fishing.” That was the verdict of the coroner’s 
jury; and that is why I pride myself on the neat 
and artistic way in which I finished off John Claver- 
house. There was no bungling, no brutality; 
nothing of which to be ashamed in the whole trans- 


14 


MOON-FACE 


action, as I am sure you will agree. No more 
does his infernal laugh go echoing among the hills, 
and no more does his fat moon-face rise up to 
vex me. My days are peaceful now, and my 
night’s sleep deep. 


THE LEOPARD MAN’S STORY 





THE LEOPARD MAN’S STORY* 


H E had a dreamy, far-away look in his eyes, 
and his sad, insistent voice, gentle-spoken 
as a maid’s, seemed the placid embodiment 
of some deep-seated melancholy. He was the Leop- 
ard Man, but he did not look it. His business in 
life, whereby he lived, was to appear in a cage of 
performing leopards before vast audiences, and to 
thrill those audiences by certain exhibitions of 
nerve for which his employers rewarded him on a 
scale commensurate with the thrills he produced. 

As I say, he did not look it. He was narrow- 
hipped, narrow-shouldered, and anaemic, while he 
seemed not so much oppressed by gloom as by a sweet 
and gentle sadness, the weight of which was as 
sweetly and gently borne. For an hour I had been 
trying to get a story out of him, but he appeared to 
lack imagination. To him there was no romance 
in his gorgeous career, no deeds of daring, no thrills 
— nothing but a gray sameness and infinite boredom. 
Lions ? Oh, yes ! he had fought with them. It 

* Copyright, 1903, by Frank Leslie Publishing House. 

c 17 


i8 THE LEOPARD MAN’S STORY 

was nothing. All you had to do was to stay sober. 
Anybody could whip a lion to a standstill with an 
ordinary stick. He had fought one for half an hour 
once. Just hit him on the nose every time he rushed, 
and when he got artful and rushed with his head 
down, why, the thing to do was to stick out your 
leg. When he grabbed at the leg you drew it back 
and hit him on the nose again. That was all. 

With the far-away look in his eyes and his soft 
flow of words he showed me his scars. There were 
many of them, and one recent one where a tigress 
had reached for his shoulder and gone down to the 
bone. I could see the neatly mended rents in the 
coat he had on. His right arm, from the elbow 
down, looked as though it had gone through a 
threshing machine, what of the ravage wrought by 
claws and fangs. But it was nothing, he said, only 
the old wounds bothered him somewhat when 
rainy weather came on. 

Suddenly his face brightened with a recollection, 
for he was really as anxious to give me a story as I 
was to get it. 

“I suppose you’ve heard of the lion-tamer who 
was hated by another man ? ” he asked. 


THE LEOPARD MAN’S STORY 


!9 


He paused and looked pensively at a sick lion in 
the cage opposite. 

“Got the toothache,” he explained. “Well, the 
lion-tamer’s big play to the audience was putting 
his head in a lion’s mouth. The man who hated 
him attended every performance in the hope some- 
time of seeing that lion crunch down. He followed 
the show about all over the country. The years 
went by and he grew old, and the lion-tamer grew 
old, and the lion grew old. And at last one day, 
sitting in a front seat, he saw what he had waited 
for. The lion crunched down, and there wasn’t 
any need to call a doctor.” 

The Leopard Man glanced casually over his 
finger nails in a manner which would have been 
critical had it not been so sad. 

“Now, that’s what I call patience,” he continued, 
“and it’s my style. But it was not the style of a 
fellow I knew. He was a little, thin, sawed-off, 
sword-swallowing and juggling Frenchman. De 
Ville, he called himself, and he had a nice wife. She 
did trapeze work and used to dive from under the 
roof into a net, turning over once on the way as nice 
as you please. 


20 


THE LEOPARD MAN’S STORY 


“De Ville had a quick temper, as quick as his 
hand, and his hand was as quick as the paw of a 
tiger. One day, because the ring-master called him 
a frog-eater, or something like that and maybe a 
little worse, he shoved him against the soft pine 
background he used in his knife-throwing act, so 
quick the ring-master didn’t have time to think, 
and there, before the audience, De Ville kept the 
air on fire with his knives, sinking them into the wood 
all around the ring-master so close that they passed 
through his clothes and most of them bit into his 
skin. 

“The clowns had to pull the knives out to get 
him loose, for he was pinned fast. So the word 
went around to watch out for De Ville, and no one 
dared be more than barely civil to his wife. And she 
was a sly bit of baggage, too, only all hands were 
afraid of De Ville. 

“But there was one man, Wallace, who was 
afraid of nothing. He was the lion-tamer, and he 
had the self-same trick of putting his head into the 
lion’s mouth. He’d put it into the mouths of any 
of them, though he preferred Augustus, a big, good- 
natured beast who could always be depended upon. 


THE LEOPARD MAN’S STORY 


21 


“As I was saying, Wallace — ‘King’ Wallace 
we called him — was afraid of nothing alive or 
dead. He was a king and no mistake. I’ve seen 
him drunk, and on a wager go into the cage of a 
lion that’d turned nasty, and without a stick beat 
him to a finish. Just did it with his fist on the nose. 

“Madame de Ville — ” 

At an uproar behind us the Leopard Man turned 
quietly around. It was a divided cage, and a mon- 
key, poking through the bars and around the par- 
tition, had had its paw seized by a big gray wolf 
who was trying to pull it off by main strength. The 
arm seemed stretching out longer and longer like a 
thick elastic, and the unfortunate monkey’s mates 
were raising a terrible din. No keeper was at hand, 
so the Leopard Man stepped over a couple of paces, 
dealt the wolf a sharp blow on the nose with the 
light cane he carried, and returned with a sadly 
apologetic smile to take up his unfinished sentence 
as though there had been no interruption. 

“ — looked at King Wallace and King Wallace 
looked at her, while De Ville looked black. We 
warned Wallace, but it was no use. He laughed 
at us, as he laughed at De Ville one day when he 


22 


THE LEOPARD MAN’S STORY 


shoved De Ville’s head into a bucket of paste because 
he wanted to fight. 

“De Ville was in a pretty mess — I helped to 
scrape him off; but he was cool as a cucumber 
and made no threats at all. But I saw a glitter in 
his eyes which I had seen often in the eyes of wild 
beasts, and I went out of my way to give Wallace a 
final warning. He laughed, but he did not look 
so much in Madame de Ville’s direction after that. 

“Several months passed by. Nothing had hap- 
pened and I was beginning to think it all a scare 
over nothing. We were West by that time, showing 
in ’Frisco. It was during the afternoon perform- 
ance, and the big tent was filled with women and 
children, when I went looking for Red Denny, the 
head canvas-man, who had walked off with my 
pocket-knife. 

“Passing by one of the dressing tents I glanced 
in through a hole in the canvas to see if I could 
locate him. He wasn’t there, but directly in front 
of me was King Wallace, in tights, waiting for his 
turn to go on with his cage of performing lions. 
He was watching with much amusement a quarrel 
between a couple of trapeze artists. All the rest of 


THE LEOPARD MAN’S STORY 


23 


the people in the dressing tent were watching the 
same thing, with the exception of De Ville, whom 
I noticed staring at Wallace with undisguised hatred. 
Wallace and the rest were all too busy following the 
quarrel to notice this or what followed. 

“But I saw it through the hole in the canvas. 
De Ville drew his handkerchief from his pocket, 
made as though to mop the sweat from his face with 
it (it was a hot day), and at the same time walked 
past Wallace’s back. He never stopped, but with 
a flirt of the handkerchief kept right on to the door- 
way, where he turned his head, while passing out, 
and shot a swift look back. The look troubled me 
at the time, for not only did I see hatred in it, but 
I saw triumph as well. 

“‘De Ville will bear watching,’ I said to myself, 
and I really breathed easier when I saw him go out 
the entrance to the circus grounds and board an 
electric car for down town. A few minutes later I 
was in the big tent, where I had overhauled Red 
Denny. King Wallace was doing his turn and hold- 
ing the audience spellbound. He was in a particu- 
larly vicious mood, and he kept the lions stirred 
up till they were all snarling, that is, all of them 


24 THE LEOPARD MAN’S STORY 

except old Augustus, and he was just too fat and 
lazy and old to get stirred up over anything. 

“ Finally Wallace cracked the old lion’s knees 
with his whip and got him into position. Old 
Augustus, blinking good-naturedly, opened his 
mouth and in popped Wallace’s head. Then the 
jaws came together, crunch , just like that.” 

The Leopard Man smiled in a sweetly wistful 
fashion, and the far-away look came into his eyes. 

“And that was the end of King Wallace,” he 
went on in his sad, low voice. “After the excite- 
ment cooled down I watched my chance and bent 
over and smelled Wallace’s head. Then I sneezed.” 

“It . . . it was ... ?” I queried with halting 
eagerness. 

“Snuff — that De Ville dropped on his hair in 
the dressing tent. Old Augustus never meant to 
do it. He only sneezed.” 


LOCAL COLOR 


i 


/ *~ 









LOCAL COLOR 


“^T~ DO not see why you should not turn this 
immense amount of unusual information to 
account,” I told him. “Unlike most men 
equipped with similar knowledge, you have expres- 
sion. Your style is — ” 

“ Is sufficiently — er — journalese ? ” he inter- 
rupted suavely. 

“Precisely! You could turn a pretty penny.” 

But he interlocked his fingers meditatively, 
shrugged his shoulders, and dismissed the subject. 

“I have tried it. It does not pay.” 

“It was paid for and published,” he added, after 
a pause. “And I was also honored with sixty days 
in the Hobo.” 

“The Hobo?” I ventured. 

“The Hobo — ” He fixed his eyes on my 
Spencer and ran along the titles while he cast his 
definition. “The Hobo, my dear fellow, is the 


27 


28 


LOCAL COLOR 


name for that particular place of detention in city 
and county jails wherein are assembled tramps, 
drunks, beggars, and the riff-raff of petty offenders. 
The word itself is a pretty one, and it has a history. 
Hautbois — there’s the French of it. Haut , mean- 
ing high, and hots, wood. In English it becomes 
hautboy, a wooden musical instrument of two-foot 
tone, I believe, played with a double reed, an oboe, 
in fact. You remember in ‘Henry IV’ — 

“ ‘ The case of a treble hautboy 
Was a mansion for him, a court.’ 

From this to ho-boy is but a step, and for that 
matter the English used the terms interchangeably. 
But — and mark you, the leap paralyzes one — 
crossing the Western Ocean, in New York City, haut- 
boy, or ho-boy, becomes the name by which the 
night-scavenger is known. In a way one understands 
its being born of the contempt for wandering players 
and musical fellows. But see the beauty of it ! the 
burn and the brand ! The night-scavenger, the 
pariah, the miserable, the despised, the man with- 
out caste ! And in its next incarnation, consistently 
and logically, it attaches itself to the American out- 


LOCAL COLOR 


29 


cast, namely, the tramp. Then, as others have 
mutilated its sense, the tramp mutilates its form, 
and ho-boy becomes exultantly hobo. Wherefore, 
the large stone and brick cells, lined with double 
and triple-tiered bunks, in which the Law is wont 
to incarcerate him, he calls the Hobo. Interesting, 
isn’t it?” 

And I sat back and marvelled secretly at this 
encyclopaedic-minded man, this Leith Clay-Ran- 
dolph, this common tramp who made himself at 
home in my den, charmed such friends as gathered 
at my small table, outshone me with his brilliance 
and his manners, spent my spending money, smoked 
my best cigars, and selected from my ties and studs 
with a cultivated and discriminating eye. 

He absently walked over to the shelves and looked 
into Loria’s “ Economic Foundation of Society.” 

“I like to talk with you,” he remarked. “You 
are not indifferently schooled. You’ve read the books, 
and your economic interpretation of history, as you 
choose to call it” (this with a sneer), “eminently 
fits you for an intellectual outlook on life. But 
your sociologic judgments are vitiated by your lack 
of practical knowledge. Now I, who know the books. 


30 


LOCAL COLOR 


pardon me, somewhat better than you, know life, 
too. I have lived it, naked, taken it up in both my 
hands and looked at it, and tasted it, the flesh and 
the blood of it, and, being purely an intellectual, 
I have been biased by neither passion nor prejudice. 
All of which is necessary for clear concepts, and all 
of which you lack. Ah! a really clever passage. 
Listen !” 

And he read aloud to me in his remarkable style, 
paralleling the text with a running criticism and 
commentary, lucidly wording involved and lumber- 
ing periods, casting side and cross lights upon the 
subject, introducing points the author had blundered 
past and objections he had ignored, catching up lost 
ends, ^flinging a contrast into a paradox and reduc- 
ing it to a coherent and succinctly stated truth — 
in short, flashing his luminous genius in a blaze 
of fire over pages erstwhile dull and heavy and 
lifeless. 

It is long since that Leith Clay-Randolph (note 
the hyphenated surname) knocked at the back door 
of Idlewild and melted the heart of Gunda. Now 
Gunda was cold as her Norway hills, though in her 
least frigid moods she was capable of permitting 


LOCAL COLOR 


3 1 


especially nice-looking tramps to sit on the back 
stoop and devour lone crusts and forlorn and for- 
saken chops. But that a tatterdemalion out of the 
night should invade the sanctity of her kitchen- 
kingdom and delay dinner while she set a place for 
him in the warmest corner, was a matter of such 
moment that the Sunflower went to see. Ah, the 
Sunflower, of the soft heart and swift sympathy ! 
Leith Clay-Randolph threw his glamour over her 
for fifteen long minutes, whilst I brooded with my 
cigar, and then she fluttered back with vague words 
and the suggestion of a cast-off suit I would never 
miss. 

“Surely I shall never miss it,” I said, and I had 
in mind the dark gray suit with the pockets draggled 
from the freightage of many books — books that 
had spoiled more than one day’s fishing sport. 

“I should advise you, however,” I added, “to 
mend the pockets first.” 

But the Sunflower’s face clouded. “N-o,” she 
said, “the black one.” 

“The black one!” This explosively, incredu- 
lously. “I wear it quite often. I — I intended 
wearing it to-night.” 


32 


LOCAL COLOR 


“You have two better ones, and you know I never 
liked it, dear,” the Sunflower hurried on. “ Besides, 
it’s shiny — ” 

“Shiny!” 

“It — it soon will be, which is just the same, 
and the man is really estimable. He is nice and 
refined, and I am sure he — ” 

“Has seen better days.” 

“Yes, and the weather is raw and beastly, and 
his clothes are threadbare. And you have many 
suits — ” 

“Five,” I corrected, “counting in the dark gray 
fishing outfit with the draggled pockets.” 

“And he has none, no home, nothing — ” 

“Not even a Sunflower,” — putting my arm 
around her, — “wherefore he is deserving of all 
things. Give him the black suit, dear — nay, the 
best one, the very best one. Under high heaven 
for such lack there must be compensation!” 

“You are a dear!” And the Sunflower moved 
to the door and looked back alluringly. “You 
are a perfect dear.” 

And this after seven years, I marvelled, till she was 
back again, timid and apologetic. 


LOCAL COLOR 


33 


“I — I gave him one of your white shirts. He 
wore a cheap horrid cotton thing, and I knew it 
would look ridiculous. And then his shoes were so 
slipshod, I let him have a pair of yours, the old ones 
with the narrow caps — ” 

“Old ones V 9 

“Well, they pinched horribly, and you know 
they did.” 

It was ever thus the Sunflower vindicated things. 

And so Leith Clay-Randolph came to Idlewild 
to stay, how long I did not dream. Nor did I dream 
how often he was to come, for he was like an erratic 
comet. Fresh he would arrive, and cleanly clad, 
from grand folk who were his friends as I was his 
friend, and again, weary and worn, he would creep 
up the brier-rose path from the Montanas’ or Mexico. 
And without a word, when his wanderlust gripped 
him, he was off* and away into that great mys- 
terious underworld he called “The Road.” 

“I could not bring myself to leave until I had 
thanked you, you of the open hand and heart,” 
he said, on the night he donned my good black 
suit. 

And I confess I was startled when I glanced 


34 


LOCAL COLOR 


over the top of my paper and saw a lofty-browed 
and eminently respectable-looking gentleman, boldly 
and carelessly at ease. The Sunflower was right. 
He must have known better days for the black suit 
and white shirt to have effected such a transforma- 
tion. Involuntarily I rose to my feet, prompted 
to meet him on equal ground. And then it 
was that the Clay-Randolph glamour descended 
upon me. He slept at Idlewild that night, and the 
next night, and for many nights. And he was a 
man to love. The Son of Anak, otherwise Rufus 
the Blue-Eyed, and also plebeianly known as Tots, 
rioted with him from brier-rose path to farthest 
orchard, scalped him in the haymow with barbaric 
yells, and once, with pharisaic zeal, was near to 
crucifying him under the attic roof beams. The 
Sunflower would have loved him for the Son of 
Anak’s sake, had she not loved him for his own. 
As for myself, let the Sunflower tell, in the times he 
elected to be gone, of how often I wondered when 
Leith would come back again, Leith the Lovable. 

Yet he was a man of whom we knew nothing. 
Beyond the fact that he was Kentucky-born, his 
past was a blank. He never spoke of it. And he 


LOCAL COLOR 


35 


was a man who prided himself upon his utter divorce 
of reason from emotion. To him the world spelled 
itself out in problems. I charged him once with 
being guilty of emotion when roaring round the den 
with the Son of Anak pickaback. Not so, he held. 
Could he not cuddle a sense-delight for the problem’s 
sake ? 

He was elusive. A man who intermingled name- 
less argot with polysyllabic and technical terms, he 
would seem sometimes the veriest criminal, in speech, 
face, expression, everything; at other times the cul- 
tured and polished gentleman, and again, the phi- 
losopher and scientist. But there was something 
glimmering there which I never caught — flashes of 
sincerity, of real feeling, I imagined, which were 
sped ere I could grasp ; echoes of the man he 
once was, possibly, or hints of the man behind the 
mask. But the mask he never lifted, and the real 
man we never knew. 

“But the sixty days with which you were re- 
warded for your journalism?” I asked. “Never 
mind Loria. Tell me.” 

“Well, if I must.” He flung one knee over the 
other with a short laugh. 


3$ 


LOCAL COLOR 


“In a town that shall be nameless,” he began, 
“in fact, a city of fifty thousand, a fair and beautiful 
city wherein men slave for dollars and women for 
dress, an idea came to me. My front was prepos- 
sessing, as fronts go, and my pockets empty. I had 
in recollection a thought I once entertained of writ- 
ing a reconciliation of Kant and Spencer. Not that 
they are reconcilable, of course, but the room 
offered for scientific satire — ” 

I waved my hand impatiently, and he broke 
off. 

“I was just tracing my mental states for you, in 
order to show the genesis of the action,” he explained. 
“However, the idea came. What was the matter 
with a tramp sketch for the daily press ? The Ir- 
reconcilability of the Constable and the Tramp, for 
instance ? So I hit the drag (the drag, my dear 
fellow, is merely the street), or the high places, if 
you will, for a newspaper office. The elevator 
whisked me into the sky, and Cerberus, in the guise 
of an anaemic office boy, guarded the door. Con- 
sumption, one could see it at a glance; nerve, Irish, 
colossal ; tenacity, undoubted ; dead inside the 
year. 


LOCAL COLOR 


37 


“‘Pale youth,’ quoth I, ‘I pray thee the way to 
the sanctum-sanctorum, to the Most High Cock-a- 
lorum.’ 

“He deigned to look at me, scornfully, with in- 
finite weariness. 

“‘G’wan an’ see the janitor. I don’t know 
nothin’ about the gas.’ 

“‘Nay, my lily-white, the editor.’ 

“‘Wich editor?’ he snapped like a young bull- 
terrier. ‘Dramatic? Sportin’? Society? Sunday? 
Weekly ? Daily ? Telegraph ? Local ? News ? Edito- 
rial ? Wich?’ 

“Which, I did not know. 'The Editor,’ I pro- 
claimed stoutly. ‘The only Editor.’ 

“‘Aw, Spargo!’ he sniffed. 

“‘Of course, Spargo,’ I answered. ‘Who else?’ 

“‘Gimme yer card,’ says he. 

“‘My what?’ 

“‘Yer card — Say! Wot’s yer business, any- 
way ?’ 

“And the anaemic Cerberus sized me up with 
so insolent an eye that I reached over and took him 
out of his chair. I knocked on his meagre chest 
with my fore knuckle, and fetched forth a weak, 


3 « 


LOCAL COLOR 


gaspy cough; but he looked at me unflinchingly, 
much like a defiant sparrow held in the hand. 

“‘I am the census-taker Time,’ I boomed in se- 
pulchral tones. ‘Beware lest I knock too loud/ 
“‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he sneered. 

“Whereupon I rapped him smartly, and he choked 
and turned purplish. 

“‘Well, whatcher want?’ he wheezed with re- 
turning breath. 

“‘I want Spargo, the only Spargo/ 

“‘Then leave go, an’ I'll glide an’ see/ 

“‘No you don’t, my lily-white.’ And I took a 
tighter grip on his collar. ‘No bouncers in mine, 
understand! I’ll go along.’” 

Leith dreamily surveyed the long ash of his cigar 
and turned to me. “Do you know, Anak, you 
can’t appreciate the joy of being the buffoon, play- 
ing the clown. You couldn’t do it if you wished. 
Your pitiful little conventions and smug assumptions 
of decency would prevent. But simply to turn 
loose your soul to every whimsicality, to play the fool 
unafraid of any possible result, why, that requires 
a man other than a householder and law-respect- 
ing citizen. 


LOCAL COLOR 


39 


“ However, as I was saying, I saw the only Spargo. 
He was a big, beefy, red-faced personage, full- 
jowled and double-chinned, sweating at his desk 
in his shirt-sleeves. It was August, you know. He 
was talking into a telephone when I entered, or 
swearing rather, I should say, and the while study- 
ing me with his eyes. When he hung up, he turned 
to me expectantly. 

“‘You are a very busy man,’ I said. 

“He jerked a nod with his head, and 
waited. 

“‘And after all, is it worth it ?’ I went on. ‘What 
does life mean that it should make you sweat ? 
What justification do you find in sweat ? Now 
look at me. I toil not, neither do I spin — 9 

“‘Who are you? What are you?’ he bellowed 
with a suddenness that was, well, rude, tearing the 
words out as a dog does a bone. 

“‘A very pertinent question, sir/ I acknowledged. 
‘First, I am a man; next, a down-trodden American 
citizen. I am cursed with neither profession, trade, 
nor expectations. Like Esau, I am pottageless. 
My residence is everywhere; the sky is my coverlet. 
I am one of the dispossessed, a sansculotte, a proleta- 


40 


LOCAL COLOR 


rian, or, in simpler phraseology addressed to your 
understanding, a tramp/ 

“‘What the hell — ? 9 

“‘Nay, fair sir, a tramp, a man of devious ways 
and strange lodgements and multifarious — ’ 

“‘Quit it!’ he shouted. ‘What do you want?’ 

“‘I want money/ 

“He started and half reached for an open drawer 
where must have reposed a revolver, then bethought 
himself and growled, ‘This is no bank/ 

“‘Nor have I checks to cash. But I have, sir, 
an idea, which, by your leave and kind assistance, 
I shall transmute into cash. In short, how does a 
tramp sketch, done by a tramp to the life, strike you ? 
Are you open to it ? Do your readers hunger for 
it ? Do they crave after it ? Can they be happy 
without it?’ 

“I thought for a moment that he would have 
apoplexy, but he quelled the unruly blood and said 
he liked my nerve. I thanked him and assured 
him I liked it myself. Then he offered me a cigar 
and said he thought he’d do business with me. 

“‘But mind you/ he said, when he had jabbed 
a bunch of copy paper into my hand and given me 


LOCAL COLOR 


4i 


a pencil from his vest pocket, ‘mind you, I won’t 
stand for the high and flighty philosophical, and I 
perceive you have a tendency that way. Throw in 
the local color, wads of it, and a bit of sentiment 
perhaps, but no slumgullion about political economy 
nor social strata or such stuff. Make it concrete, 
to the point, with snap and go and life, crisp and 
crackling and interesting — tumble ?’ 

“And I tumbled and borrowed a dollar. 

“‘Don’t forget the local color!’ he shouted after 
me through the door. 

“And, Anak, it was the local color that did for me. 

“The anaemic Cerberus grinned when I took 
the elevator. ‘Got the bounce, eh?’ 

“‘Nay, pale youth, so lily-white,’ I chortled, 
waving the copy paper; ‘not the bounce, but a de- 
tail. I’ll be City Editor in three months, and then 
I’ll make you jump.’ 

“And as the elevator stopped at the next floor 
down to take on a pair of maids, he strolled over to 
the shaft, and without frills or verbiage consigned 
me and my detail to perdition. But I liked him. 
He had pluck and was unafraid, and he knew, 
as well as I, that death clutched him close.” 


42 


LOCAL COLOR 


“But how could you, Leith/’ I cried, the picture 
of the consumptive lad strong before me, “how 
could you treat him so barbarously ?” 

Leith laughed dryly. “ My dear fellow, how 
often must I explain to you your confusions ? Ortho- 
dox sentiment and stereotyped emotion master you. 
And then your temperament! You are really in- 
capable of rational judgments. Cerberus ? Pshaw ! 
A flash expiring, a mote of fading sparkle, a dim- 
pulsing and dying organism — pouf! a snap of the 
fingers, a puff of breath, what would you ? A pawn 
in the game of life. Not even a problem. There 
is no problem in a still-born babe, nor in a dead 
child. They never arrived. Nor did Cerberus. 
Now for a really pretty problem — ” 

“But the local color?” I prodded him. 

“That’s right,” he replied. “Keep me in the 
running. Well, I took my handful of copy paper 
down to the railroad yards (for local color), dangled 
my legs from a side-door Pullman, which is another 
name for a box-car, and ran off the stuff. Of course 
I made it clever and brilliant and all that, with my 
little unanswerable slings at the state and my social 
paradoxes, and withal made it concrete enough to 


LOCAL COLOR 


43 


dissatisfy the average citizen. From the tramp 
standpoint, the constabulary of the township was 
particularly rotten, and I proceeded to open the 
eyes of the good people. It is a proposition, mathe- 
matically demonstrable, that it costs the community 
more to arrest, convict, and confine its tramps in 
jail, than to send them as guests, for like periods of 
time, to the best hotel. And this I developed, giv- 
ing the facts and figures, the constable fees and the 
mileage, and the court and jail expenses. Oh, it 
was convincing, and it was true; and I did it in a 
lightly humorous fashion which fetched the laugh 
and left the sting. The main objection to the sys- 
tem, I contended, was the defraudment and robbery 
of the tramp. The good money which the commu- 
nity paid out for him should enable him to riot in 
luxury instead of rotting in dungeons. I even drew 
the figures so fine as to permit him not only to live 
in the best hotel but to smoke two twenty-five -cent 
cigars and indulge in a ten-cent shine each day, 
and still not cost the taxpayers so much as they 
were accustomed to pay for his conviction and jail 
entertainment. And, as subsequent events proved, 
it made the taxpayers wince. 


44 


LOCAL COLOR 


“One of the constables I drew to the life; nor 
did I forget a certain Sol Glenhart, as rotten a police 
judge as was to be found between the seas. And this 
I say out of a vast experience. While he was notorious 
in local trampdom, his civic sins were not only not 
unknown but a crying reproach to the townspeople. 
Of course I refrained from mentioning name or 
habitat, drawing the picture in an impersonal, com- 
posite sort of way, which none the less blinded no 
one to the faithfulness of the local color. 

“ Naturally, myself a tramp, the tenor of the article 
was a protest against the maltreatment of the tramp. 
Cutting the taxpayers to the pits of their purses 
threw them open to sentiment, and then in I tossed 
the sentiment, lumps and chunks of it. Trust me, 
it was excellently done, and the rhetoric — say ! 
Just listen to the tail of my peroration: 

“ ‘ So, as we go mooching along the drag, with a sharp 
lamp out for John Law, we cannot help remembering 
that we are beyond the pale; that our ways are not their 
ways; and that the ways of John Law with us are differ- 
ent from his ways with other men. Poor lost souls, 
wailing for a crust in the dark, we know full well our 
helplessness and ignominy. And well may we repeat 


LOCAL COLOR 


45 


after a stricken brother over-seas : “ Our pride it is to 
know no spur of pride.” Man has forgotten us; God 
has forgotten us; only are we remembered by the har- 
pies of justice, who prey upon our distress and coin our 
sighs and tears into bright shining dollars.’ 

“Incidentally, my picture of Sol Glenhart, the 
police judge, was good. A striking likeness, and 
unmistakable, with phrases tripping along like this: 
‘This crook-nosed, gross-bodied harpy’; ‘this civic 
sinner, this judicial highwayman’; ‘possessing the 
morals of the Tenderloin and an honor which thieves’ 
honor puts to shame’; ‘who compounds criminality 
with shyster-sharks, and in atonement railroads the 
unfortunate and impe:unious to rotting cells,’ — 
and so forth and so forth, style sophomoric and 
devoid of the dignity and tone one would employ 
in a dissertation on ‘Surplus Value,’ or ‘The Falla- 
cies of Marxism,’ but just the stuff the dear public 
likes. 

“‘Humph !’ grunted Spargo when I put the copy 
in his fist. ‘Swift gait you strike, my man.’ 

“I fixed a hypnotic eye on his vest pocket, and 
he passed out one of his superior cigars, which I 
burned while he ran through the stuff. Twice or 


46 LOCAL COLOR 

thrice he looked over the top of the paper at me, 
searchingly, but said nothing till he had finished. 

“‘Where’d you work, you pencil-pusher ?’ he 
asked. 

“‘My maiden effort,’ I simpered modestly, scrap- 
ing one foot and faintly simulating embarrass- 
ment. 

“‘Maiden hell! What salary do you want?’ 

“‘Nay, nay,’ I answered. ‘No salary in mine, 
thank you most to death. I am a free down-trodden 
American citizen, and no man shall say my time is 
his.’ 

“‘Save John Law,’ he chuckled. 

“‘Save John Law,’ said I. 

“‘How did you know I was bucking the police 
department?’ he demanded abruptly. 

“‘I didn’t know, but I knew you were in train- 
ing,’ I answered. ‘Yesterday morning a charitably 
inclined female presented me with three biscuits, 
a piece of cheese, and a funereal slab of chocolate 
cake, all wrapped in the current Clarion , wherein I 
noted an unholy glee because the Cowbell' s candi- 
date for chief of police had been turned down. 
Likewise I learned the municipal election was at 


LOCAL COLOR 


47 


hand, and put two and two together. Another 
mayor, and the right kind, means new police com- 
missioners; new police commissioners means new 
chief of police; new chief of police means Cow- 
bell's candidate; ergo, your turn to play/ 

“He stood up, shook my hand, and emptied his 
plethoric vest pocket. I put them away and puffed 
on the old one. 

“‘You’ll do/ he jubilated. ‘This stuff’ (patting 
my copy) ‘is the first gun of the campaign. You’ll 
touch off many another before we’re done. I’ve 
been looking for you for years. Come on in on the 
editorial.’ 

“But I shook my head. 

“‘Come, now!’ he admonished sharply. ‘No 
shenanagan ! The Cowbell must have you. It 
hungers for you, craves after you, won’t be happy 
till it gets you. What say?’ 

“In short, he wrestled with me, but I was bricks, 
and at the end of half an hour the only Spargo gave 
it up. 

“‘Remember,’ he said, ‘any time you reconsider, 
I’m open. No matter where you are, wire me and 
I’ll send the ducats to come on at once.’ 


48 


LOCAL COLOR 


“I thanked him, and asked the pay for my copy 
— dope, he called it. 

“‘Oh, regular routine/ he said. ‘Get it the first 
Thursday after publication/ 

“‘Then I’ll have to trouble you for a few scad 
until — 9 

“He looked at me and smiled. ‘Better cough up, 
eh?’ 

“‘Sure/ I said. ‘Nobody to identify me, so 
make it cash/ 

“And cash it was made, thirty plunks (a plunk 
is a dollar, my dear Anak), and I pulled my freight 
. . . eh ? — oh, departed. 

“‘Pale youth/ I said to Cerberus, ‘I am bounced/ 
(He grinned with pallid joy.) ‘And in token of the 
sincere esteem I bear you, receive this little — ’ 
(His eyes flushed and he threw up one hand, swiftly, 
to guard his head from the expected blow) — ‘this 
little memento/ 

“I had intended to slip a fiver into his hand, but 
for all his surprise, he was too quick for me. 

“‘Aw, keep yer dirt/ he snarled. 

“‘I like you still better/ I said, adding a second 
fiver. ‘You grow perfect. But you must take it/ 


LOCAL COLOR 


49 


“He backed away growling, but I caught him 
round the neck, roughed what little wind he had 
out of him, and left him doubled up with the two 
fives in his pocket. But hardly had the elevator 
started, when the two coins tinkled on the roof and 
fell down between the car and the shaft. As luck 
had it, the door was not closed, and I put out my 
hand and caught them. The elevator boy’s eyes 
bulged. 

“‘It’s a way I have,’ I said, pocketing them. 

“‘Some bloke’s dropped ’em down the shaft,’ he 
whispered, awed by the circumstance. 

“‘It stands to reason,’ said I. 

“‘I’ll take charge of ’em,’ he volunteered. 

“‘Nonsense !’ 

“‘You’d better turn ’em over,’ he threatened, ‘or 
I stop the works.’ 

“‘Pshaw!’ 

“And stop he did, between floors. 

“‘Young man,’ I said, ‘have you a mother?’ 
(He looked serious, as though regretting his act, 
and further to impress him I rolled up my right 
sleeve with greatest care.) ‘Are you prepared to 
die?’ (I got a stealthy crouch on, and put a cat- 
£ 


5o 


LOCAL COLOR 


foot forward.) ‘But a minute, a brief minute, 
stands between you and eternity/ (Here I crooked 
my right hand into a claw and slid the other foot 
up.) ‘Young man, young man/ I trumpeted, ‘in 
thirty seconds I shall tear your heart dripping from 
your bosom and stoop to hear you shriek in hell/ 

“It fetched him. He gave one whoop, the car 
shot down, and I was on the drag. You see, Anak, . 
it’s a habit I can’t shake off of leaving vivid memories 
behind. No one ever forgets me. 

“I had not got to the corner when I heard a 
familiar voice at my shoulder: 

“‘Hello, Cinders! Which way?’ 

“It was Chi Slim, who had been with me once 
when I was thrown off a freight in Jacksonville. 
‘Couldn’t see ’em fer cinders,’ he described it, and 
the monica stuck by me. . . . Monica ? From 
monos. The tramp nickname. 

“‘Bound south,’ I answered. ‘And how’s Slim ?’ 

“‘Bum. Bulls is horstile.’ 

“‘Where’s the push?’ 

“‘At the hang-out. I’ll put you wise.’ 

‘“Who’s the main guy?’ 

“‘Me, and don’t yer ferget it.’” 


LOCAL COLOR 


5i 


The lingo was rippling from Leith’s lips, but per- 
force I stopped him. “ Pray translate. Remember, 
I am a foreigner.” 

“Certainly,” he answered cheerfully. “Slim is 
in poor luck. Bull means policeman. He tells me 
the bulls are hostile. I ask where the push is, the 
gang he travels with. By putting me wise he will 
direct me to where the gang is hanging out. The 
main guy is the leader. Slim claims that distinc- 
tion. 

“Slim and I hiked out to a neck of woods just 
beyond town, and there was the push, a score of 
husky hobos, charmingly located on the bank of a 
little purling stream. 

“‘Come on, you mugs!’ Slim addressed them. 
‘Throw yer feet! Here’s Cinders, an’ we must do 
’em proud.’ 

“All of which signifies that the hobos had better 
strike out and do some lively begging in order to 
get the wherewithal to celebrate my return to the 
fold after a year’s separation. But I flashed my 
dough and Slim sent several of the younger men 
off to buy the booze. Take my word for it, Anak, 
it was a blow-out memorable in Trampdom to this 


52 


LOCAL COLOR 


day. It’s amazing the quantity of booze thirty 
plunks will buy, and it is equally amazing the 
quantity of booze outside of which twenty stiffs 
will get. Beer and cheap wine made up the card, 
with alcohol thrown in for the blow ed-'in-the- glass 
stiffs. It was great — an orgy under the sky, a 
contest of beaker-men, a study in primitive beastli- 
ness. To me there is something fascinating in a 
drunken man, and were I a college president I 
should institute P.G. psychology courses in prac- 
tical drunkenness. It would beat the books and 
compete with the laboratory. 

“All of which is neither here nor there, for after 
sixteen hours of it, early next morning, the whole 
push was copped by an overwhelming array of con- 
stables and carted off to jail. After breakfast, 
about ten o’clock, we were lined upstairs into court, 
limp and spiritless, the twenty of us. And there, 
under his purple panoply, nose crooked like a 
Napoleonic eagle and eyes glittering and beady, sat 
Sol Glenhart. 

“‘John Ambrose!’ the clerk called out, and Chi 
Slim, with the ease of long practice, stood up. 

“‘Vagrant, your Honor,’ the bailiff volunteered, 


LOCAL COLOR 


53 


and his Honor, not deigning to look at the prisoner, 
snapped, ‘Ten days/ and Chi Slim sat down. 

“And so it went, with the monotony of clock- 
work, fifteen seconds to the man, four men to the 
minute, the mugs bobbing up and down, in turn 
like marionettes. The clerk called the name, the 
bailiff the offence, the judge the sentence, and 
the man sat down. That was all. Simple, eh? 
Superb ! 

“Chi Slim nudged me. ‘Give ’m a spiel, Cinders. 
You kin do it/ 

“I shook my head. 

“‘G’wan,’ he urged. ‘Give ’m a ghost story. 
The mugs ’ll take it all right. And you kin throw 
yer feet fer tobacco for us till we get out/ 

“‘L. C. Randolph!’ the clerk called. 

“I stood up, but a hitch came in the proceedings. 
The clerk whispered to the judge, and the bailiff 
smiled. 

“‘You are a newspaper man, I understand, Mr. 
Randolph ?’ his Honor remarked sweetly. 

“It took me by surprise, for I had forgotten the 
Cowbell in the excitement of succeeding events, and 
I now saw myself on the edge of the pit I had digged. 


54 


LOCAL COLOR 


“‘That’s yer graft . Work it/ Slim prompted. 

‘“It’s all over but the shouting/ I groaned back, 
but Slim, unaware of the article, was puzzled. 

“‘Your Honor/ I answered, ‘when I can get 
work, that is my occupation/ 

“‘You take quite an interest in local affairs, I 
see/ (Here his Honor took up the morning’s Cow- 
bell and ran his eye up and down a column I knew 
was mine.) ‘Color is good/ he commented, an 
appreciative twinkle in his eyes; ‘pictures excellent, 
characterized by broad, Sargent-like effects. Now 
this . . . this judge you have depicted . . . you, ah, 
draw from life, I presume ?’ 

“‘Rarely, your Honor/ I answered. ‘Composites, 
ideals, rather . . . er, types, I may say.’ 

“‘But you have color, sir, unmistakable color/ he 
continued. 

“‘That is splashed on afterward,’ I explained. 

“‘This judge, then, is not modelled from life, as 
one might be led to believe?’ 

“‘No, your Honor.’ 

“‘Ah, I see, merely a type of judicial wickedness ?’ 

“‘Nay, more, your Honor/ I said boldly, ‘an 
ideal.’ 


LOCAL COLOR 


55 


“‘Splashed with local color afterward? Ha! 
Good ! And may I venture to ask how much you 
received for this bit of work?’ 

Thirty dollars, your Honor.’ 

“‘Hum, good!’ And his tone abruptly changed. 
‘Young man, local color is a bad thing. I find you 
guilty of it and sentence you to thirty days’ im- 
prisonment, or, at your pleasure, impose a fine of 
thirty dollars.’ 

“‘Alas!’ said I, ‘I spent the thirty dollars in 
riotous living.’ 

“‘And thirty days more for wasting your sub- 
stance.’ 

“‘Next case !’ said his Honor to the clerk. 

“Slim was stunned. ‘Gee!’ he whispered. ‘Gee! 
the push gets ten days and you get sixty. Gee ! ’ ” 

Leith struck a match, lighted his dead cigar, and 
opened the book on his knees. “Returning to the 
original conversation, don’t you find, Anak, that 
though Loria handles the bipartition of the revenues 
with scrupulous care, he yet omits one important 
factor, namely — ” 

“Yes,” I said absently; “yes.” 










* 





l 



4 











AMATEUR NIGHT 






- 




































































































, . 

























































































































































































AMATEUR NIGHT * 


T HE elevator boy smiled knowingly to him- 
self. When he took her up, he had noted 
the sparkle in her eyes, the color in her 
cheeks. His little cage had quite warmed with 
the glow of her repressed eagerness. And now, 
on the down trip, it was glacier-like. The 
sparkle and the color were gone. She was frown- 
ing, and what little he could see of her eyes was 
cold and steel-gray. Oh, he knew the symptoms, 
he did. He was an observer, and he knew it, 
too, and some day, when- he was big enough, 
he was going to be a reporter, sure. And in the 
meantime he studied the procession of life as it 
streamed up and down eighteen sky-scraper floors 
in his elevator car. He slid the door open for her 
sympathetically and watched her trip determinedly 
out into the street. 

There was a robustness in her carriage which 


* Copyright, 1903, by Pilgrim Magazine Company. 

59 


6o 


AMATEUR NIGHT 


came of the soil rather than of the city pavement. But 
it was a robustness in a finer than the wonted sense, 
a vigorous daintiness, it might be called, which gave 
an impression of virility with none of the womanly 
left out. It told of a heredity of seekers and 
fighters, of people that worked stoutly with head 
and hand, of ghosts that reached down out of the 
misty past and moulded and made her to be a doer 
of things. 

But she was a little angry, and a great deal hurt. 
“I can guess what you would tell me,” the editor 
had kindly but firmly interrupted her lengthy pre- 
amble in the long-looked-forward-to interview just 
ended. “And you have told me enough,” he had 
gone on (heartlessly, she was sure, as she went 
over the conversation in its freshness). “You have 
done no newspaper work. You are undrilled, un- 
disciplined, unhammered into shape. You have 
received a high-school education, and possibly 
topped it off with normal school or college. You 
have stood well in English. Your friends have all 
told you how cleverly you write, and how beauti- 
fully, and so forth and so forth. You think you 
can do newspaper work, and you want me to put 


AMATEUR _GHT 


61 


you on. Well, I am sorry, but there are no open- 
ings. If you I new how crowded — ” 

“ But if there are no openings,” she had inter- 
rupted, in turn, “how did those who are in, get in? 
How am I to show that I am eligible to get in ?” 

“They made themselves indispensable,” was the 
terse response. “Make yourself indispensable.” 

“But how can I, if I do not get the chance?” 

“Make your chance.” 

“But how?” she had insisted, at the same time 
privately deeming him a most unreasonable man. 

“How? That is your business, not mine,” he 
said conclusively, rising in token that the interview 
was at an end. “I must inform you, my dear 
young lady, that there have been at least eighteen 
other aspiring young ladies here this week, and 
that I have not the time to tell each and every one 
of them how. The function I perform on this paper 
is hardly that of instructor in a school of journalism.” 

She caught an outbound car, and ere she de- 
scended ifom it she had conned the conversation 
over and over again. “But how?” she repeated 
to herself, as she climbed the three flights of stairs 
to the rooms where she and her sister “bach’ed.” 


62 


AMATEUR NIGHT 


“But how?” And so she continued to put the 
interrogation, for the stubborn Scotch blood, though 
many times removed from Scottish soil, was still 
strong in her. And, further, there was need that 
she should learn how. Her sister Letty and she 
had come up from an interior town to the city to 
make their way in the world. John Wyman was 
land-poor. Disastrous business enterprises had 
burdened his acres and forced his two girls, Edna 
and Letty, into doing something for themselves. A 
year of school-teaching and of night-study of short- 
hand and typewriting had capitalized their city 
project and fitted them for the venture, which same 
venture was turning out anything but successful. 
The city seemed crowded with inexperienced ste- 
nographers and typewriters, and they had nothing 
but their own inexperience to offer. Edna’s secret 
ambition had been journalism; but she had planned 
a clerical position first, so that she might have 
time and space in which to determine where and 
on what line of journalism she woulu embark. 
But the clerical position had not been forthcoming, 
either for Letty or her, and day by day their little 
hoard dwindled, though the room rent remained 


AMATEUR NIGHT 63 

normal and the stove consumed coal with un- 
diminished voracity. And it was a slim little 
hoard by now. 

“There’s Max Irwin,” Letty said, talking it over. 
“He’s a journalist with a national reputation. Go 
and see him, Ed. He knows how, and he should be 
able to tell you how.” 

“But I don’t know him,” Edna objected. 

“No more than you knew the editor you saw 
to-day.” 

“Y-e-s,” (long and judicially), “but that’s dif- 
ferent.” 

“Not a bit different from the strange men and 
women you’ll interview when you’ve learned how,” 
Letty encouraged. 

“I hadn’t looked at it in that light,” Edna con- 
ceded. “After all, where’s the difference between 
interviewing Mr. Max Irwin for some paper, or 
interviewing Mr. Max Irwin for myself? It will be 
practice, too. I’ll go and look him up in the 
directory.” 

“Letty, I know I can write if I get the chance,” 
she announced decisively a moment later. “I just 
feel that I have the feel of it, if you know what I 


mean. 


6 4 


AMATEUR NIGHT 


And Letty knew and nodded. “I wonder what 
he is like?’’ she asked softly. 

‘Til make it my business to find out,” Edna 
assured her; “and I’ll let you know inside forty- 
eight hours.” 

Letty clapped her hands. “Good! That’s the 
newspaper spirit ! Make it twenty-four hours, and 
you are perfect!” 

“ — and I am sorry to trouble you,” she con- 
cluded the statement of her case to Max Irwin, 
famous war correspondent and veteran journalist. 

“Not at all,” he answered, with a deprecatory 
wave of the hand. “If you don’t do your own talk- 
ing, who’s to do it for you ? Now I understand 
your predicament precisely. You want to get on 
the Intelligencer , you want to get on at once, and 
you have had no previous experience. In the first 
place, then, have you any pull ? There are a dozen 
men in the city, a line from whom would be an open- 
sesame. After that you would stand or fall by 
your own ability. There’s Senator Longbridge, for 
instance, and Claus Inskeep the street-car magnate, 
and Lane, and McChesney — ” He paused, with 
voice suspended. 


AMATEUR NIGHT 65 

“I am sure I know none of them, ,, she answered 
despondently. 

“It’s not necessary. Do you know any one that 
knows them ? or any one that knows any one else 
that knows them ?” 

Edna shook her head. 

“Then we must think of something else,” he 
went on, cheerfully. “ You’ll have to do something 
yourself. Let me see.” 

He stopped and thought for a moment, with 
closed eyes and wrinkled forehead. She was watch- 
ing him, studying him intently, when his blue 
eyes opened with a snap and his face suddenly 
brightened. 

“I have it! But no, wait a minute.” 

And for a minute it was his turn to study her. 
And study her he did, till she could feel her cheeks 
flushing under his gaze. 

“You’ll do, I think, though it remains to be 
seen,” he said enigmatically. “It will show the stuff 
that’s in you, besides, and it will be a better claim 
upon the Intelligencer people than all the lines from 
all the senators and magnates in the world. The 
thing for you is to do Amateur Night at the Loops.” 


66 


AMATEUR NIGHT 


“I — I hardly understand,” Edna said, for 
his suggestion conveyed no meaning to her. 
“What are the ‘Loops’? and what is ‘Amateur 
Night’ ?” 

“I forgot you said you were from the interior. 
But so much the better, if you’ve only got the jour- 
nalistic grip. It will be a first impression, and first 
impressions are always unbiased, unprejudiced, 
fresh, vivid. The Loops are out on the rim of 
the city, near the Park, — a place of diversion. 
There’s a scenic railway, a water toboggan slide, a 
concert band, a theatre, wild animals, moving pic- 
tures, and so forth and so forth. The common 
people go there to look at the animals and 
enjoy themselves, and the other people go there 
to enjoy themselves by watching the common 
people enjoy themselves. A democratic, fresh- 
air-breathing, frolicking affair, that’s what the 
Loops are. 

“But the theatre is what concerns you. It’s 
vaudeville. One turn follows another — jugglers, 
acrobats, rubber-jointed wonders, fire-dancers, coon- 
song artists, singers, players, female impersonators, 
sentimental soloists, and so forth and so forth. 


AMATEUR NIGHT 


67 


These people are professional vaudevillists. They 
make their living that way. Many are excellently 
paid. Some are free rovers, doing a turn wherever 
they can get an opening, at the Obermann, the 
Orpheus, the Alcatraz, the Louvre, and so forth and 
so forth. Others cover circuit pretty well all over 
the country. An interesting phase of life, and the 
pay is big enough to attract many aspirants. 

“Now the management of the Loops, in its bid 
for popularity, instituted what is called 'Amateur 
Night 9 ; that is to say, twice a week, after the pro- 
fessionals have done their turns, the stage is given 
over to the aspiring amateurs. The audience re- 
mains to criticise. The populace becomes the 
arbiter of art — or it thinks it does, which is the 
same thing; and it pays its money and is well pleased 
with itself, and Amateur Night is a paying propo- 
sition to the management. 

“But the point of Amateur Night, and it is well 
to note it, is that these amateurs are not really 
amateurs. They are paid for doing their turn. At 
the best, they may be termed 'professional ama- 
teurs.’ It stands to reason that the management 
could not get people to face a rampant audience 


68 


AMATEUR NIGHT 


for nothing, and on such occasions the audience 
certainly goes mad. It’s great fun — for the 
audience. But the thing for you to do, and it re- 
quires nerve, I assure you, is to go out, make arrange- 
ments for two turns, (Wednesday and Saturday 
nights, I believe), do your two turns, and write it 
up for the Sunday Intelligencer ” 

“ But — but,” she quavered, “ I — I — ” and there 
was a suggestion of disappointment and tears in her 
voice. 

“I see,” he said kindly. “ You were expecting 
something else, something different, something bet- 
ter. We all do at first. But remember the admiral 
of the Queen’s Na-vee, who swept the floor and 
polished up the handle of the big front door. You 
must face the drudgery of apprenticeship or quit 
right now. What do you say?” 

The abruptness with which he demanded her 
decision startled her. As she faltered, she could 
see a shade of disappointment beginning to darken 
his face. 

“In a way it must be considered a test,” he added 
encouragingly. “A severe one, but so much the 
better. Now is the time. Are you game ?” 


AMATEUR NIGHT 


69 


‘Til try,” she said faintly, at the same time 
making a note of the directness, abruptness, and 
haste of these city men with whom she was coming 
in contact. 

“ Good ! Why, when I started in, I had the 
dreariest, deadliest details imaginable. And after 
that, for a weary time, I did the police and divorce 
courts. But it all came well in the end and did me 
good. You are luckier in making your start with 
Sunday work. It’s not particularly great. What 
of it ? Do it. Show the stuff you’re made of, and 
you’ll get a call for better work — better class and 
better pay. Now you go out this afternoon to the 
Loops, and engage to do two turns.” 

“But what kind of turns can I do ?” Edna asked 
dubiously. 

“ Do ? That’s easy. Can you sing ? Never 
mind, don’t need to sing. Screech, do anything — 
that’s what you’re paid for, to afford amusement, 
to give bad art for the populace to howl down. 
And when you do your turn, take some one along 
for chaperon. Be afraid of no one. Talk up. 
Move about among the amateurs waiting their turn, 
pump them, study them, photograph them in your 


7o 


AMATEUR NIGHT 


brain. Get the atmosphere, the color, strong color, 
lots of it. Dig right in with both hands, and get the 
essence of it, the spirit, the significance. What does 
it mean ? Find out what it means. That’s what 
you’re there for. That’s what the readers of the 
Sunday Intelligencer want to know. 

“ Be terse in style, vigorous of phrase, apt, con- 
cretely apt, in similitude. Avoid platitudes and 
commonplaces. Exercise selection. Seize upon 
things salient, eliminate the rest, and you have pic- 
tures. Paint those pictures in words and the Intel- 
ligencer will have you. Get hold of a few back 
numbers, and study the Sunday Intelligencer feature 
story. Tell it all in the opening paragraph as ad- 
vertisement of contents, and in the contents tell it 
all over again. Then put a snapper at the end, so 
if they’re crowded for space they can cut off your 
contents anywhere, re-attach the snapper, and the 
story will still retain form. There, that’s enough. 
Study the rest out for yourself.” 

They both rose to their feet, Edna quite carried 
away by his enthusiasm and his quick, jerky sen- 
tences, bristling with the things she wanted to know. 

“And remember, Miss Wyman, if you’re 


am- 


AMATEUR NIGHT 


7i 


bitious, that the aim and end of journalism is not 
the feature article. Avoid the rut. The feature is 
a trick. Master it, but don’t let it master you. 
But master it you must; for if you can’t learn to 
do a feature well, you can never expect to do any- 
thing better. In short, put your whole self into it, 
and yet, outside of it, above it, remain yourself, if 
you follow me. And now good luck to you.” 

They had reached the door and were shaking 
hands. 

“And one thing more,” he interrupted her thanks, 
“let me see your copy before you turn it in. I 
may be able to put you straight here and there.” 

Edna found the manager of the Loops a full- 
fleshed, heavy-jowled man, bushy of eyebrow and 
generally belligerent of aspect, with an absent- 
minded scowl on his face and a black cigar stuck 
in the midst thereof. Symes was his name, she 
had learned, Ernst Symes. 

“Whatcher turn?” he demanded, ere half her 
brief application had left her lips. 

“Sentimental soloist, soprano,” she answered 
promptly, remembering Irwin’s advice to talk up. 


72 


AMATEUR NIGHT 


“Whatcher name?” Mr. Symes asked, scarcely 
deigning to glance at her. 

She hesitated. So rapidly had she been rushed 
into the adventure that she had not considered the 
question of a name at all. 

“Any name? Stage name?” he bellowed im- 
patiently. 

“Nan Bellayne,” she invented on the spur of the 
moment. “ B-e-l-l-a-y-n-e. Yes, that’s it.” 

He scribbled it into a notebook. “All right. 
Take your turn Wednesday and Saturday.” 

“How much do I get?” Edna demanded. 

“Two-an’-a-half a turn. Two turns, five. Getcher 
pay first Monday after second turn.” 

And without the simple courtesy of “Good day,” 
he turned his back on her and plunged into the 
newspaper he had been reading when she entered. 

Edna came early on Wednesday evening, Letty 
with her, and in a telescope basket her costume — 
a simple affair. A plaid shawl borrowed from the 
washerwoman, a ragged scrubbing skirt borrowed 
from the charwoman, and a gray wig rented from a 
costumer for twenty-five cents a night, completed 


AMATEUR NIGHT 


73 

the outfit; for Edna had elected to be an old Irish- 
woman singing broken-heartedly after her wander- 
ing boy. 

Though they had come early, she found every- 
thing in uproar. The main performance was under 
way, the orchestra was playing and the audience 
intermittently applauding. The infusion of the 
amateurs clogged the working of things behind the 
stage, crowded the passages, dressing rooms, and 
wings, and forced everybody into everybody else’s 
way. This was particularly distasteful to the pro- 
fessionals, who carried themselves as befitted those 
of a higher caste, and whose behavior toward the 
pariah amateurs was marked by hauteur and even 
brutality. And Edna, bullied and elbowed and 
shoved about, clinging desperately to her basket and 
seeking a dressing room, took note of it all. 

A dressing room she finally found, jammed with 
three other amateur “ladies,” who were “ making 
up” with much noise, high-pitched voices, and 
squabbling over a lone mirror. Her own make-up 
was so simple that it was quickly accomplished, and 
she left the trio of ladies holding an armed truce 
while they passed judgment upon her. Letty was 


74 


AMATEUR NIGHT 


close at her shoulder, and with patience and per- 
sistence they managed to get a nook in one of the 
wings which commanded a view of the stage. 

A small, dark man, dapper and debonair, swal- 
low-tailed and top-hatted, was waltzing about the 
stage with dainty, mincing steps, and in a thin little 
voice singing something or other about somebody or 
something evidently pathetic. As his waning voice 
neared the end of the lines, a large woman, crowned 
with an amazing wealth of blond hair, thrust rudely 
past Edna, trod heavily on her toes, and shoved her 
contemptuously to the side. “ Bloomin’ hamateur ! ” 
she hissed as she went past, and the next instant she 
was on the stage, graciously bowing to the audience, 
while the small, dark man twirled extravagantly 
about on his tiptoes. 

“ Hello, girls!” 

This greeting, drawled with an inimitable vocal 
caress in every syllable, close in her ear, caused 
Edna to give a startled little jump. A smooth- 
faced, moon-faced young man was smiling at her 
good-naturedly. His “make-up” was plainly that 
of the stock tramp of the stage, though the inevitable 
whiskers were lacking. 


AMATEUR NIGHT 


“Oh, it don’t take a minute to slap ’m on,” he ex- 
plained, divining the search in her eyes and waving 
in his hand the adornment in question. “They 
make a feller sweat,” he explained further. And 
then, “What’s yer turn?” 

“Soprano — sentimental,” she answered, trying 
to be offhand and at ease. 

“Whata you doin’ it for?” he demanded directly. 

“For fun; what else ?” she countered. 

“I just sized you up for that as soon as I put eyes 
on you. You ain’t graftin’ for a paper, are you ?” 

“I never met but one editor in my life,” she re- 
plied evasively, “ and I, he — well, we didn’t get on 
very well together.” 

“Hittin’ ’m for a job ?” 

Edna nodded carelessly, though inwardly anxious 
and cudgelling her brains for something to turn the 
conversation. 

“What ’d he say?” 

“That eighteen other girls had already been there 
that week.” 

“Gave you the icy mit, eh?” The moon-faced 
young man laughed and slapped his thighs. “You 
see, we’re kind of suspicious. The Sunday papers ’d 


AMATEUR NIGHT 


like to get Amateur Night done up brown in a nice 
little package, and the manager don’t see it that way. 
Gets wild-eyed at the thought of it.” 

“And what’s your turn ?” she asked. 

“Who? me? Oh, I’m doin’ the tramp act to- 
night. I’m Charley Welsh, you know.” 

She felt that by the mention of his name he in- 
tended to convey to her complete enlightenment, but 
the best she could do was to say politely, “Oh, is 
that so ?” 

She wanted to laugh at the hurt disappointment 
which came into his face, but concealed her amuse- 
ment. 

“Come, now,” he said brusquely, “you can’t 
stand there and tell me you’ve never heard of 
Charley Welsh ? Well, you must be young. Why, 
I’m an Only, the Only amateur at that. Sure, you 
must have seen me. I’m everywhere. I could be 
a professional, but I get more dough out of it by 
doin’ the amateur.” 

“But what’s an ‘Only’?” she queried. “I want 
to learn.” 

“Sure,” Charley Welsh said gallantly. “I’ll put 
you wise. An ‘Only’ is a nonpareil, the feller that 


AMATEUR NIGHT 


77 

does one kind of a turn better’n any other feller. 
He’s the Only, see?” 

And Edna saw. 

“To get a line on the biz,” he continued, “throw 
yer lamps on me. I’m the Only all-round amateur. 
To-night I make a bluff at the tramp act. It’s 
harder to bluff it than to really do it, but then it’s 
acting, it’s amateur, it’s art. See ? I do every- 
thing, from Sheeny monologue to team song and 
dance and Dutch comedian. Sure, I’m Charley 
Welsh, the Only Charley Welsh.” 

And in this fashion, while the thin, dark man and 
the large, blond woman warbled dulcetly out on 
the stage and the other professionals followed in 
their turns, did Charley Welsh put Edna wise, 
giving her much miscellaneous and superfluous in- 
formation and much that she stored away for the 
Sunday Intelligencer. 

“Well, tra la loo,” he said suddenly. “There’s 
his highness chasin’ you up. Yer first on the bill. 
Never mind the row when you go on. Just finish 
yer turn like a lady.” 

It was at that moment that Edna felt her journal- 
istic ambition departing from her, and was aware of 


78 


AMATEUR NIGHT 


an overmastering desire to be somewhere else. But 
the stage manager, like an ogre, barred her retreat. 
She could hear the opening bars of her song going up 
from the orchestra and the noises of the house dying 
away to the silence of anticipation. 

“Go ahead,” Letty whispered, pressing her hand; 
and from the other side came the peremptory 
“Don’t flunk!” of Charley Welsh. 

But her feet seemed rooted to the floor, and she 
leaned weakly against a shift scene. The orchestra 
was beginning over again, and a lone voice from the 
house piped with startling distinctness : 

“ Puzzle picture ! Find Nannie !” 

A roar of laughter greeted the sally, and Edna 
shrank back. But the strong hand of the manager 
descended on her shoulder, and with a quick, 
powerful shove propelled her out on to the stage. 
His hand and arm had flashed into full view, and 
the audience, grasping the situation, thundered its 
appreciation. The orchestra was drowned out by 
the terrible din, and Edna could see the bows scrap- 
ing away across the violins, apparently without sound. 
It was impossible for her to begin in time, and as 
she patiently waited, arms akimbo and ears strain- 


AMATEUR NIGHT 


79 


ing for the music, the house let loose again (a favorite 
trick, she afterward learned, of confusing the ama- 
teur by preventing him or her from hearing the 
orchestra). 

But Edna was recovering her presence of mind. 
She became aware, pit to dome, of a vast sea of 
smiling and fun-distorted faces, of vast roars of 
laughter, rising wave on wave, and then her Scotch 
blood went cold and angry. The hard-working but 
silent orchestra gave her the cue, and, without 
making a sound, she began to move her lips, stretch 
forth her arms, and sway her body, as though she 
were really singing. The noise in the house re- 
doubled in the attempt to drown her voice, but she 
serenely went on with her pantomime. This seemed 
to continue an interminable time, when the audience, 
tiring of its prank and in order to hear, suddenly 
stilled its clamor, and discovered the dumb show 
she had been making. For a moment all was silent, 
save for the orchestra, her lips moving on without 
a sound, and then the audience realized that it 
had been sold, and broke out afresh, this time 
with genuine applause in acknowledgment of her 
victory. She chose this as the happy moment 


8o 


AMATEUR NIGHT 


for her exit, and with a bow and a backward re- 
treat, she was off the stage in Letty’s arms. 

The worst was past, and for the rest of the evening 
she moved about among the amateurs and profes- 
sionals, talking, listening, observing, finding out what 
it meant and taking mental notes of it all. Charley 
Welsh constituted himself her preceptor and guard- 
ian angel, and so well did he perform the self- 
allotted task that when it was all over she felt fully 
prepared to write her article. But the proposition 
had been to do two turns, and her native pluck 
forced her to live up to it. Also, in the course of 
the intervening days, she discovered fleeting im- 
pressions that required verification; so, on Saturday, 
she was back again, with her telescope basket and 
Letty. 

The manager seemed looking for her, and she 
caught an expression of relief in his eyes when he 
first saw her. He hurried up, greeted her, and 
bowed with a respect ludicrously at variance with 
his previous ogre-like behavior. And as he bowed, 
across his shoulders she saw Charley Welsh de- 
liberately wink. 

But the surprise had just begun. The manager 


AMATEUR NIGHT 


81 


begged to be introduced to her sister, chatted enter- 
tainingly with the pair of them, and strove greatly 
and anxiously to be agreeable. He even went so 
far as to give Edna a dressing room to herself, to 
the unspeakable envy of the three other amateur 
ladies of previous acquaintance. Edna was non- 
plussed, and it was not till she met Charley Welsh 
in the passage that light was thrown on the mystery. 

“ Hello !” he greeted her. “On Easy Street, eh? 
Everything slidin’ your way.” 

She smiled brightly. 

“Thinks yer a female reporter, sure. I almost 
split when I saw ’m layin’ himself out sweet an’ 
pleasin’. Honest, now, that ain’t yer graft, is it?” 

“I told you my experience with editors,” she 
parried. “And honest now, it was honest, too.” 

But the Only Charley Welsh shook his head 
dubiously. “Not that I care a rap,” he declared. 
“And if you are, just gimme a couple of lines of 
notice, the right kind, good ad, you know. And if 
yer not, why yer all right anyway. Yer not our 
class, that’s straight.” 

After her turn, which she did this time with the 
nerve of an old campaigner, the manager returned 


82 


AMATEUR NIGHT 


to the charge; and after saying nice things and 
being generally nice himself, he came to the point. 

“You’ll treat us well, I hope,” he said insinu- 
atingly. “ Do the right thing by us, and all 
that?” 

“Oh,” she answered innocently, “you couldn’t 
persuade me to do another turn; I know I seemed to 
take . and that you’d like to have me, but I really, 
really can’t.” 

“You know what I mean,” he said, with a touch 
of his old bulldozing manner. 

“No, I really won’t,” she persisted. “Vaude- 
ville’s too — too wearing on the nerves, my nerves, 
at any rate.” 

Whereat he looked puzzled and doubtful, and 
forbore to press the point further. 

But on Monday morning, when she came to his 
office to get her pay for the two turns, it was he 
who puzzled her. 

“You surely must have mistaken me,” he lied 
glibly. “I remember saying something about pay- 
ing your car fare. We always do this, you know, 
but we never, never pay amateurs. That would 
take the life and sparkle out of the whole thing. 


AMATEUR NIGHT 


83 


No, Charley Welsh was stringing you. He gets 
paid nothing for his turns. No amateur gets paid. 
The idea is ridiculous. However, here’s fifty cents. 
It will pay your sister’s carfare also. And,” — very 
suavely, — “ speaking for the Loops, permit me to 
thank you for the kind and successful contribution 
of your services.” 

That afternoon, true to her promise to Max Irwin, 
she placed her typewritten copy into his hands. 
And while he ran over it, he nodded his head from 
time to time, and maintained a running fire of 
commendatory remarks : “ Good ! — that’s it ! — 

that’s the stuff! — psychology’s all right! — the 
very idea ! — you’ve caught it ! — excellent ! — 
missed it a bit here, but it’ll go — that’s vigorous ! 
— strong ! — vivid ! — pictures ! pictures ! — excel- 
lent ! — most excellent ! ” 

And when he had run down to the bottom of the 
last page, holding out his hand: “My dear Miss 
Wyman, I congratulate you. I must say you have 
exceeded my expectations, which, to say the least, 
were large. You are a journalist, a natural jour- 
nalist. You’ve got the grip, and you’re sure to get 
on. The Intelligencer will take it, without doubt, 


84 


AMATEUR NIGHT 


and take you too. They’ll have to take you. If 
they don’t, some of the other papers will get 
you.” 

“But what’s this?” he queried, the next instant, 
his face going serious. “You’ve said nothing about 
receiving the pay for your turns, and that’s one of 
the points of the feature. I expressly mentioned it, 
if you’ll remember.” 

“It will never do,” he said, shaking his head 
ominously, when she had explained. “You simply 
must collect that money somehow. Let me see. 
Let me think a moment.” 

“Never mind, Mr. Irwin,” she said. “I’ve 
bothered you enough. Let me use your ’phone, 
please, and I’ll try Mr. Ernst Symes again.” 

He vacated his chair by the desk, and Edna took 
down the receiver. 

“Charley Welsh is sick,” she began, when the 
connection had been made. “What? No! I’m 
not Charley Welsh. Charley Welsh is sick, and his 
sister wants to know if she can come out this after- 
noon and draw his pay for him?” 

“Tell Charley Welsh’s sister that Charley Welsh 
was out this morning, and drew his own pay,” 


AMATEUR NIGHT 85 

came back the manager’s familiar tones, crisp 
with asperity. 

“All right,” Edna went on. “And now Nan 
Bellayne wants to know if she and her sister can 
come out this afternoon and draw Nan Bellayne’s 
pay?” 

“ What’d he say ? What’d he say ?” Max Irwin 
cried excitedly, as she hung up. 

“That Nan Bellayne was too much for him, and 
that she and her sister could come out and get her 
pay and the freedom of the Loops, to boot.” 

“One thing more,” he interrupted her thanks at 
the door, as on her previous visit. “Now that you’ve 
shown the stuff you’re made of, I should esteem it, 
ahem, a privilege to give you a line myself to the 
Intelligencer people.” 


















THE MINIONS OF MIDAS 








THE MINIONS OF MIDAS* 


W ADE ATSHELER is dead — dead by his 
own hand. To say that this was entirely 
unexpected by the small coterie which knew 
him, would be to say an untruth; and yet never once 
had we, his intimates, ever canvassed the idea. 
Rather had we been prepared for it in some incom- 
prehensible subconscious way. Before the per- t 
petration of the deed, its possibility was remotest 
from our thoughts; but when we did know that he 
was dead, it seemed, somehow, that we had under- 
stood and looked forward to it all the time. This, 
by retrospective analysis, we could easily explain by 
the fact of his great trouble. I use “great trouble” 
advisedly. Young, handsome, with an assured 
position as the right-hand man of Eben Hale, the 
great street-railway magnate, there could be no 
reason for him to complain of fortune’s favors. Yet 
we had watched his smooth brow furrow and 
corrugate as under some carking care or devouring 
sorrow. We had watched his thick, black hair 

* Copyright, 1901, by Pearson Publishing Company. 

89 


9 o 


THE MINIONS OF MIDAS 


thin and silver as green grain under brazen skies 
and parching drought. Who can forget, in the 
midst of the hilarious scenes he toward the last 
sought with greater and greater avidity — who can 
forget, I say, the deep abstractions and black moods 
into which he fell ? At such times, when the fun 
rippled and soared from height to height, suddenly, 
without rhyme or reason, his eyes would turn lack- 
lustre, his brows knit, as with clenched hands 
and face overshot with spasms of mental pain he 
wrestled on the edge of the abyss with some unknown 
danger. 

He never spoke of his trouble, nor were we indis- 
creet enough to ask. But it was just as well; for 
had we, and had he spoken, our help and strength 
could have availed nothing. When Eben Hale 
died, whose confidential secretary he was — nay, 
well-nigh adopted son and full business partner — 
he no longer came among us. Not, as I now know, 
that our company was distasteful to him, but be- 
cause his trouble had so grown that he could not 
respond to our happiness nor find surcease with us. 
Why this should be so we could not at the time 
understand, for when Eben Hale’s will was pro- 


THE MINIONS OF MIDAS 91 

bated, the world learned that he was sole heir to his 
employer’s many millions, and it was expressly 
stipulated that this great inheritance was given to 
him without qualification, hitch, or hindrance in 
the exercise thereof. Not a share of stock, not a 
penny of cash, was bequeathed to the dead man’s 
relatives. As for his direct family, one astounding 
clause expressly stated that Wade Atsheler was to 
dispense to Eben Hale’s wife and sons and daughters 
whatever moneys his judgment dictated, at what- 
ever times he deemed advisable. Had there been 
any scandal in the dead man’s family, or had his 
sons been wild or undutiful, then there might have 
been a glimmering of reason in this most unusual 
action; but Eben Hale’s domestic happiness had 
been proverbial in the community, and one would 
have to travel far and wide to discover a cleaner, 
saner, wholesomer progeny of sons and daughters. 
While his wife — well, by those who knew her best 
she was endearingly termed “The Mother of the 
Gracchi.” Needless to state, this inexplicable 
will was a nine days’ wonder; but the expectant 
public was disappointed in that no contest was 
made. 


92 


THE MINIONS OF MIDAS 


It was only the other day that Eben Hale was 
laid away in his stately marble mausoleum. And 
now Wade Atsheler is dead. The news was printed 
in this morning’s paper. I have just received 
through the mail a letter from him, posted, evidently, 
but a short hour before he hurled himself into eternity. 
This letter, which lies before me, is a narrative in 
his own handwriting, linking together numerous 
newspaper clippings and facsimiles of letters. The 
original correspondence, he has told me, is in the 
hands of the police. He has begged me, also, as a 
warning to society against a most frightful and 
diabolical danger which threatens its very existence, 
to make public the terrible series of tragedies in 
which he has been innocently concerned. I here- 
with append the text in full: 

It was in August, 1899, just after my return from 
my summer vacation, that the blow fell. We did 
not know it at the time; we had not yet learned to 
school our minds to such awful possibilities. Mr. 
Hale opened the letter, read it, and tossed it upon 
my desk with a laugh. When I had looked it over, 
I also laughed, saying, “Some ghastly joke, Mr. 


THE MINIONS OF MIDAS 


93 


Hale, and one in very poor taste/' Find here, my 
dear John, an exact duplicate of the letter in 
question. 

Office of the M. of M., 
August 17, 1899. 

Mr. Eben Hale, Money Baron: 

Dear Sir , — We desire you to realize upon what- 
ever portion of your vast holdings is necessary to 
obtain, in cash , twenty millions of dollars. This sum 
we require you to pay over to us, or to our agents. 
You will note we do not specify any given time, for 
it is not our wish to hurry you in this matter. You 
may even, if it be easier for you, pay us in ten, fifteen, 
or twenty instalments; but we will accept no single 
instalment of less than a million. 

Believe us, dear Mr. Hale, when we say that we 
embark upon this course of action utterly devoid of 
animus. We are members of that intellectual prole- 
tariat, the increasing numbers of which mark in 
red lettering the last days of the nineteenth century. 
We have, from a thorough study of economics, de- 
cided to enter upon this business. It has many 
merits, chief among which may be noted that we 


94 


THE MINIONS OF MIDAS 


can indulge in large and lucrative operations with- 
out capital. So far, we have been fairly successful, 
and we hope our dealings with you may be pleasant 
and satisfactory. 

Pray attend while we explain our views more 
fully. At the base of the present system of society 
is to be found the property right. And this right 
of the individual to hold property is demonstrated, 
in the last analysis, to rest solely and wholly 
upon might. The mailed gentlemen of William 
the Conqueror divided and apportioned England 
amongst themselves with the naked sword. This, 
we are sure you will grant, is true of all feudal 
possessions. With the invention of steam and 
the Industrial Revolution there came into existence 
the Capitalist Class, in the modern sense of the 
word. These capitalists quickly towered above 
the ancient nobility. The captains of industry 
have virtually dispossessed the descendants of the 
captains of war. Mind, and not muscle, wins in 
to-day’s struggle for existence. But this state of 
affairs is none the less based upon might. The 
change has been qualitative. The old-time Feudal 
Baronage ravaged the world with fire and sword; 


THE MINIONS OF MIDAS 


95 


the modern Money Baronage exploits the world 
■ hy mastering and applying the world’s economic 
forces. Brain, and not brawn, endures; and those 
best fitted to survive are the intellectually and com- 
mercially powerful. 

‘ We, the M. of M., are not content to become 
wage slaves. The great trusts and business com- 
binations (with which you have your rating) prevent 
us from rising to the place among you which our 
intellects qualify us to occupy. Why ? Because 
we are without capital. We are of the unwashed, but 
with this difference: our brains are of the best, and 
we have no foolish ethical nor social scruples. As 
wage slaves, toiling early and late, and living abste- 
miously, we could not save in threescore years — nor 
in twenty times threescore years — a sum of money 
sufficient successfully to cope with the great aggre- 
gations of massed capital which now exist. Never- 
theless, we have entered the arena. We now throw 
down the gage to the capital of the world. Whether 
it wishes to fight or not, it shall have to fight. 

Mr. Hale, our interests dictate us to demand of 
you twenty millions of dollars. While we are consid- 
erate enough to give you reasonable time in which to 


9 6 


THE MINIONS OF MIDAS 


carry out your share of the transaction, please do 
not delay too long. When you have agreed to our 
terms, insert a suitable notice in the agony column 
of the “ Morning Blazer.” We shall then acquaint 
you with our plan for transferring the sum men- 
tioned. You had better do this some time prior to 
October ist. If you do not, in order to show 
that we are in earnest we shall on that date kill a 
man on East Thirty-ninth Street. He will be a 
workingman. This man you do not know; nor do 
we. You represent a force in modern society; we 
also represent a force — a new force. Without 
anger or malice, we have closed in battle. As 
you will readily discern, we are simply a business 
proposition. You are the upper, and we the nether, 
millstone; this man’s life shall be ground out be- 
tween. You may save him if you agree to our con- 
ditions and act in time. 

There was once a king cursed with a golden touch. 
His name we have taken to do duty as our official 
seal. Some day, to protect ourselves against com- 
petitors, we shall copyright it. 

We beg to remain, 

The Minions of Midas. 


THE MINIONS OF MIDAS 


97 


I leave it to you, dear John, why should we not 
have laughed over such a preposterous communi- 
cation ? The idea, we could not but grant, was 
well conceived, but it was too grotesque to be 
taken seriously. Mr. Hale said he would preserve 
it as a literary curiosity, and shoved it away in a 
pigeonhole. Then we promptly forgot its existence. 
And as promptly, on the ist of October, going over 
the morning mail, we read the following: 

Office of the M. of M., 
October i, 1899. 

Mr. Eben Hale, Money Baron: 

Dear Sir , — Your victim has met his fate. An 
hour ago, on East Thirty-ninth Street, a working- 
man was thrust through the heart with a knife. Ere 
you read this his body will be lying at the Morgue. 
Go and look upon your handiwork. 

On October 14th, in token of our earnestness in 
this matter, and in case you do not relent, we shall 
kill a policeman on or near the corner of Polk Street 
and Clermont Avenue. 

Very cordially, 

The Minions of Midas. 


9 8 


THE MINIONS OF MIDAS 


Again Mr. Hale laughed. His mind was full of 
a prospective deal with a Chicago syndicate for the 
sale of all his street railways in that city, and so he 
went on dictating to the stenographer, never giving 
it a second thought. But somehow, I know not why, 
a heavy depression fell upon me. What if it were not 
a joke, I asked myself, and turned involuntarily 
to the morning paper. There it was, as befitted an 
obscure person of the lower classes, a paltry half- 
dozen lines tucked away in a corner, next a patent 
medicine advertisement : 

Shortly after five o’clock this morning, on East 
Thirty-ninth Street, a laborer named Pete Lascalle, 
while on his way to work, was stabbed to the heart 
by an unknown assailant, who escaped by run- 
ning. The police have been unable to discover any 
motive for the murder. 

“Impossible !” was Mr. Hale’s rejoinder, when 
I had read the item aloud ; but the incident evidently 
weighed upon his mind, for late in the afternoon, with 
many epithets denunciatory of his foolishness, he asked 
me to acquaint the police with the affair. I had the 


THE MINIONS OF MIDAS 


99 


pleasure of being laughed at in the Inspector’s private 
office, although I went away with the assurance that 
they would look into it and that the vicinity of Polk 
and Clermont would be doubly patrolled on the night 
mentioned. There it dropped, till the two weeks 
had sped by, when the following note came to us 
through the mail: 


Office of the M. of M., 
October 15, 1899. 

Mr. Eben Hale, Money Baron: 

Dear Sir , — Your second victim has fallen on 
schedule time. We are in no hurry; but to increase 
the pressure we shall henceforth kill weekly. To 
protect ourselves against police interference we shall 
hereafter inform you of the event but a little prior 
to or simultaneously with the deed. Trusting this 
finds you in good health, 

We are, 

The Minions of Midas. 

This time Mr. Hale took up the paper, and after 
a brief search, read to me this account: 


L CF C. 


IOO 


THE MINIONS OF MIDAS 


A DASTARDLY CRIME 

Joseph Donahue, assigned only last night to 
special patrol duty in the Eleventh Ward, at mid- 
night was shot through the brain and instantly killed. 
The tragedy was enacted in the full glare of the 
street lights on the corner of Polk Street and Cler- 
mont Avenue. Our society is indeed unstable when 
the custodians of its peace are thus openly and 
wantonly shot down. The police have so far been 
unable to obtain the slightest clue. 

Barely had he finished this when the police arrived 
— the Inspector himself and two of his keenest 
sleuths. Alarm sat upon their faces, and it was 
plain that they were seriously perturbed. Though 
the facts were so few and simple, we talked long, 
going over the affair again and again. When 
the Inspector went away, he confidently assured 
us that everything would soon be straightened 
out and the assassins run to earth. In the 
meantime he thought it well to detail guards for 
the protection of Mr. Hale and myself, and sev- 
eral more to be constantly on the vigil about 


THE MINIONS OF MIDAS 


IOI 


the house and grounds. After the lapse of a week, 
at one o’clock in the afternoon, this telegram was 
received : 


Office of the M. of M., 
October 21, 1899. 

Mr. Eben Hale, Money Baron: 

Dear Sir , — We are sorry to note how completely 
you have misunderstood us. You have seen fit to 
surround yourself and household with armed guards, 
as though, forsooth, we were common criminals, apt 
to break in upon you and wrest away by force your 
twenty millions. Believe us, this is farthest from 
our intention. 

You will readily comprehend, after a little sober 
thought, that your life is dear to us. Do not be 
afraid. We would not hurt you for the world. It 
is our policy to cherish you tenderly and protect you 
from all harm. Your death means nothing to us. 
If it did, rest assured that we would not hesitate a 
moment in destroying you. Think this over, Mr. 
Hale. When you have paid us our price, there will 
be need of retrenchment. Dismiss your guards now, 
and cut down your expenses. 


102 


THE MINIONS OF MIDAS 


Within ten minutes of the time you receive this a 
nurse-girl will have been choked to death in Brent- 
wood Park. The body may be found in the shrub- 
bery lining the path which leads off to the left from 
the band-stand. 

Cordially yours, 

The Minions of Midas. 

The next instant Mr. Hale was at the telephone, 
warning the Inspector of the impending murder. 
The Inspector excused himself in order to call up 
Police Sub-station F and despatch men to the scene. 
Fifteen minutes later he rang us up and informed us 
that the body had been discovered, yet warm, in 
the place indicated. That evening the papers 
teemed with glaring Jack-the-Strangler headlines, 
denouncing the brutality of the deed and complaining 
about the laxity of the police. We were also closeted 
with the Inspector, who begged us by all means to 
keep the affair secret. Success, he said, depended 
upon silence. 

As you know, John, Mr. Hale was a man of iron. 
He refused to surrender. But, oh, John, it was 
terrible, nay, horrible — this awful something, this 


THE MINIONS OF MIDAS 


103 


blind force in the dark. We could not fight, could 
not plan, could do nothing save hold our hands and 
wait. And week by week, as certain as the rising of 
the sun, came the notification and death of some per- 
son, man or woman, innocent of evil, but just as 
much killed by us as though w’e had done it with 
our own hands. A word from Mr. Hale and the 
slaughter would have ceased. But he hardened his 
heart and waited, the lines deepening, the mouth and 
eyes growing sterner and firmer, and the face aging 
with the hours. It is needless for me to speak 
of my own suffering during that frightful period. 
Find here the letters and telegrams of the M. of M., 
and the newspaper accounts, etc., of the various 
murders. 

You will notice also the letters warning Mr. Hale 
of certain machinations of commercial enemies and 
secret manipulations of stock. The M. of M. 
seemed to have its hand on the inner pulse of 
the business and financial world. They possessed 
themselves of and forwarded to us information 
which our agents could not obtain. One timely 
note from them, at a critical moment in a certain 
deal, saved all of five millions to Mr. Hale. At 


104 


THE MINIONS OF MIDAS 


another time they sent us a telegram which prob- 
ably was the means of preventing an anarchist 
crank from taking my employer’s life. We 
captured the man on his arrival and turned 
him over to the police, who found upon him 
enough of a new and powerful explosive to sink 
a battleship. 

We persisted. Mr. Hale was grit clear through. 
He disbursed at the rate of one hundred thou- 
sand per week for secret service. The aid of the 
Pinkertons and of countless private detective 
agencies was called in, and in addition to this 
thousands were upon our payroll. Our agents 
swarmed everywhere, in all guises, penetrating 
all classes of society. They grasped at a myriad 
clues; hundreds of suspects were jailed, and at 
various times thousands of suspicious persons 
were under surveillance, but nothing tangible came 
to light. With its communications the M. of 
M. continually changed its method of delivery. 
And every messenger they sent us was arrested 
forthwith. But these inevitably proved to be inno- 
cent individuals, while their descriptions of the 
persons who had employed them for the errand 


THE MINIONS OF MIDAS 


io 5 

never tallied. On the last day of December we 
received this notification: 

Office of the M. of M., 
December 31, 1899. 

Mr. Eben Hale, Money Baron: 

Dear Sir, — Pursuant of our policy, with which 
we flatter ourselves you are already well versed, we 
beg to state that we shall give a passport from this 
Vale of Tears to Inspector Eying, with whom, be- 
cause of our attentions, you have become so well 
acquainted. It is his custom to be in his private 
office at this hour. Even as you read this he 
breathes his last. 

Cordially yours, 

The Minions of Midas. 

I dropped the letter and sprang to the telephone. 
Great was my relief when I heard the Inspector’s 
hearty voice. But, even as he spoke, his voice died 
away in the receiver to a gurgling sob, and I heard 
faintly the crash of a falling body. Then a strange 
voice hello’d me, sent me the regards of the M. of 
M., and broke the switch. Like a flash I called up 
the public office of the Central Police, telling them 


io6 


THE MINIONS OF MIDAS 


to go at once to the Inspector’s aid in his private 
office. I then held the line, and a few minutes later 
received the intelligence that he had been found 
bathed in his own blood and breathing his last. 
There were no eyewitnesses, and no trace was dis- 
coverable of the murderer. 

Whereupon Mr. Hale immediately increased his 
secret service till a quarter of a million flowed weekly 
from his coffers. He was determined to win out. 
His graduated rewards aggregated over ten mil- 
lions. You have a fair idea of his resources and you 
can see in what manner he drew upon them. It was 
the principle, he affirmed, that he was fighting for, 
not the gold. And it must be admitted that his 
course proved the nobility of his motive. The 
police departments of all the great cities cooperated, 
and even the United States Government stepped in, 
and the affair became one of the highest questions 
of state. Certain contingent funds of the nation 
were devoted to the unearthing of the M. of M., 
and every government agent was on the alert. But 
all in vain. The Minions of Midas carried on their 
damnable work unhampered. They had their way 
and struck unerringly. 


THE MINIONS OF MIDAS 


i°7 


But while he fought to the last, Mr. Hale could 
not wash his hands of the blood with which they 
were dyed. Though not technically a murderer, 
though no jury of his peers would ever have con- 
victed him, none the less the death of every individ- 
ual was due to him. As I said before, a word 
from him and the slaughter would have ceased. 
But he refused to give that word. He insisted that 
the integrity of society was assailed ; that he was not 
sufficiently a coward to desert his post; and that 
it was manifestly just that a few should be mar- 
tyred for the ultimate welfare of the many. Never- 
theless this blood was upon his head, and he sank 
into deeper and deeper gloom. I was likewise 
whelmed with the guilt of an accomplice. Babies 
were ruthlessly killed, children, aged men; and 
not only were these murders local, but they were 
distributed over the country. In the middle of 
February, one evening, as we sat in the library, 
there came a sharp knock at the door. On re- 
sponding to it I found, lying on the carpet of the 
corridor, the following missive: 


108 THE MINIONS OF MIDAS 

Office of the M. of M., 
February 15, 1900. 

Mr. Eben Hale, Money Baron: 

Dear Sir , — Does not your soul cry out upon the 
red harvest it is reaping ? Perhaps we have been 
too abstract in conducting our business. Let us 
now be concrete. Miss Adelaide Laidlaw is a 
talented young woman, as good, we understand, as 
she is beautiful. She is the daughter of your old 
friend, Judge Laidlaw, and we happen to know that 
you carried her in your arms when she was an 
infant. She is your daughter’s closest friend, and at 
present is visiting her. When your eyes have read 
thus far her visit will have terminated. 

Very cordially, 

The Minions of Midas. 

My God ! did we not instantly realize the terrible 
import ! We rushed through the day-rooms — she 
was not there — and on to her own apartments. 
The door was locked, but we crashed it down by 
hurling ourselves against it. There she lay, just as 
she had finished dressing for the opera, smothered 
with pillows torn from the couch, the flush of life 


THE MINIONS OF MIDAS 


109 


yet on her flesh, the body still flexible and warm. 
Let me pass over the rest of this horror. You 
will surely remember, John, the newspaper ac- 
counts. 

Late that night Mr. Hale summoned me to him, 
and before God did pledge me most solemnly to 
stand by him and not to compromise, even if all 
kith and kin were destroyed. 

The next day I was surprised at his cheerful- 
ness. I had thought he would be deeply shocked 
by this last tragedy — how deep I was soon to 
learn. All day he was light-hearted and high- 
spirited, as though at last he had found a way 
out of the frightful difficulty. The next morning 
we found him dead in his bed, a peaceful smile upon 
his careworn face — asphyxiation. Through the 
connivance of the police and the authorities, it was 
given out to the world as heart disease. We deemed 
it wise to withhold the truth; but little good has 
it done us, little good has anything done us. 

Barely had I left that chamber of death, when 
— but too late — the following extraordinary letter 
was received: 


no 


THE MINIONS OF MIDAS 


Office of the M. of M., 
February 17, 1900. 

Mr. Eben Hale, Money Baron: 

Dear Sir , — You will pardon our intrusion, we 
hope, so closely upon the sad event of day before 
yesterday; but what we wish to say may be of the 
utmost importance to you. It is in our mind that 
you may attempt to escape us. There is but one 
way, apparently, as you have ere this doubtless dis- 
covered. But we wish to inform you that even this 
one way is barred. You may die, but you die 
failing and acknowledging your failure. Note this : 
We are part and parcel of your possessions. With 
your millions we pass down to your heirs and assigns 
forever. 

We are the inevitable. We are the culmination 
of industrial and social wrong. We turn upon the 
society that has created us. We are the success- 
ful failures of the age, the scourges of a degraded 
civilization. 

We are the creatures of a perverse social selection. 
We meet force with force. Only the strong shall 
endure. We believe in the survival of the fittest. 
You have crushed your wage slaves into the dirt 


THE MINIONS OF MIDAS 


in 


and you have survived. The captains of war, at 
your command, have shot down like dogs your 
employees in a score of bloody strikes. By such 
means you have endured. We do not grumble 
at the result, for we acknowledge and have our 
being in the same natural law. And now the ques- 
tion has arisen : U nder the present social environ- 
ment , which of us shall survive? We believe we 
are the fittest. You believe you are the fittest. We 
leave the eventuality to time and law. 

Cordially yours, 

The Minions of Midas. 

John, do you wonder now that I shunned pleas- 
ure and avoided friends ? But why explain ? Surely 
this narrative will make everything clear. Three 
weeks ago Adelaide Laidlaw died. Since then I 
have waited in hope and fear. Yesterday the will 
was probated and made public. To-day I was noti- 
fied that a woman of the middle class would be 
killed in Golden Gate Park, in far-away San Fran- 
cisco. The despatches in to-night’s papers give the 
details of the brutal happening — details which 
correspond with those furnished me in advance. 


1 12 


THE MINIONS OF MIDAS 


It is useless. I cannot struggle against the 
inevitable. I have been faithful to Mr. Hale and 
have worked hard. Why my faithfulness should 
have been thus rewarded I cannot understand. 
Yet I cannot be false to my trust, nor break my 
word by compromising. Still, I have resolved 
that no more deaths shall be upon my head. I 
have willed the many millions I lately received to 
their rightful owners. Let the stalwart sons of 
Eben Hale work out their own salvation. Ere you 
read this I shall have passed on. The Minions 
of Midas are all-powerful. The police are im- 
potent. I have learned from them that other 
millionnaires have been likewise mulcted or perse- 
cuted — how many is not known, for when one 
yields to the M. of M., his mouth is thenceforth 
sealed. Those who have not yielded are even now 
reaping their scarlet harvest. The grim game is 
being played out. The Federal Government can 
do nothing. I also understand that similar branch 
organizations have made their appearance in Europe. 
Society is shaken to its foundations. Principali- 
ties and powers are as brands ripe for the burning. 
Instead of the masses against the classes, it is a 


THE MINIONS OF MIDAS 


”3 

class against the classes. We, the guardians of 
human progress, are being singled out and struck 
down. Law and order have failed. 

The officials have begged me to keep this secret. 
I have done so, but can do so no longer. It has be- 
come a question of public import, fraught with the 
direst consequences, and I shall do my duty before 
I leave this world by informing it of its peril. Do 
you, John, as my last request, make this public. 
Do not be frightened. The fate of humanity rests 
in your hand. Let the press strike off millions 
of copies; let the electric currents sweep it round 
the world; wherever men meet and speak, let them 
speak of it in fear and trembling. And then, when 
thoroughly aroused, let society arise in its might 
and cast out this abomination. 

Yours, in long farewell, 

Wade Atsheler. 












« 




I 












THE SHADOW AND THE FLASH 


THE SHADOW AND THE FLASH* 


W HEN I look back, I realize what a peculiar 
friendship it was. First, there was Lloyd 
Inwood, tall, slender, and finely knit, 
nervous and dark. And then Paul Tichlorne, tall, 
slender, and finely knit, nervous and blond. Each 
was the replica of the other in everything except 
color. Lloyd’s eyes were black ; Paul’s were blue. 
Under stress of excitement, the blood coursed olive 
in the face of Lloyd, crimson in the face of Paul. 
But outside this matter of coloring they were as 
like as two peas. Both were high-strung, prone to 
excessive tension and endurance, and they lived 
at concert pitch. 

But there was a trio involved in this remarkable 
friendship, and the third was short, and fat, and 
chunky, and lazy, and, loath to say, it was I. Paul 
and Lloyd seemed born to rivalry with each other, 
and I to be peacemaker between them. We grew 

* COPYRIGHT, 1903, BY DODD, MEAD & Co. 


n8 THE SHADOW AND THE FLASH 


up together, the three of us, and full often have I 
received the angry blows each intended for the other. 
They were always competing, striving to outdo each 
other, and when entered upon some such struggle 
there was no limit either to their endeavors or 
passions. 

This intense spirit of rivalry obtained in their 
studies and their games. If Paul memorized one 
canto of “ Marmion,” Lloyd memorized two cantos, 
Paul came back with three, and Lloyd again with 
four, till each knew the whole poem by heart. I 
remember an incident that occurred at the swimming 
hole — an incident tragically significant of the life- 
struggle between them. The boys had a game of 
diving to the bottom of a ten-foot pool and holding 
on by submerged roots to see who could stay under 
the longest. Paul and Lloyd allowed themselves 
to be bantered into making the descent together. 
When I saw their faces, set and determined, disap- 
pear in the water as they sank swiftly down, I felt 
a foreboding of something dreadful. The moments 
sped, the ripples died away, the face of the pool 
grew placid and untroubled, and neither black nor 
golden head broke surface in quest of air. We 


THE SHADOW AND THE FLASH 119 

above grew anxious. The longest record of the 
longest-winded boy had been exceeded, and still 
there was no sign. Air bubbles trickled slowly 
upward, showing that the breath had been expelled 
from their lungs, and after that the bubbles ceased 
to trickle upward. Each second became inter- 
minable, and, unable longer to endure the suspense, 
I plunged into the water. 

I found them down at the bottom, clutching tight 
to the roots, their heads not a foot apart, their eyes 
wide open, each glaring fixedly at the other. They 
were suffering frightful torment, writhing and twist- 
ing in the pangs of voluntary suffocation; for neither 
would let go and acknowledge himself beaten. I 
tried to break Paul’s hold on the root, but he re- 
sisted me fiercely. Then I lost my breath and came 
to the surface, badly scared. I quickly explained 
the situation, and half a dozen of us went down and 
by main strength tore them loose. By the time we 
got them out, both were unconscious, and it was only 
after much barrel-rolling and rubbing and pounding 
that they finally came to their senses. They would 
have drowned there, had no one rescued them. 

When Paul Tichlorne entered college, he let it 


120 


THE SHADOW AND THE FLASH 


be generally understood that he was going in for the 
social sciences. Lloyd Inwood, entering at the same 
time, elected to take the same course. But Paul 
had had it secretly in mind all the time to study the 
natural sciences, specializing on chemistry, and at 
the last moment he switched over. Though Lloyd 
had already arranged his year’s work and attended 
the first lectures, he at once followed Paul’s lead 
and went in for the natural sciences and especially 
for chemistry. Their rivalry soon became a noted 
thing throughout the university. Each was a spur 
to the other, and they went into chemistry deeper 
than did ever students before — so deep, in fact, 
that ere they took their sheepskins they could have 
stumped any chemistry or “cow college” professor 
in the institution, save “old” Moss, head of the 
department, and even him they puzzled and edified 
more than once. Lloyd’s discovery of the “death 
bacillus” of the sea toad, and his experiments on 
it with potassium cyanide, sent his name and that 
of his university ringing round the world; nor was 
Paul a whit behind when he succeeded in producing 
laboratory colloids exhibiting amoeba-like activities, 
and when he cast new light upon the processes of 


THE SHADOW AND THE FLASH 


121 


fertilization through his startling experiments with 
simple sodium chlorides and magnesium solutions 
on low forms of marine life. 

It was in their undergraduate days, however, 
in the midst of their profoundest plunges into the 
mysteries of organic chemistry, that Doris Van 
Benschoten entered into their lives. Lloyd met 
her first, but within twenty-four hours Paul saw to 
it that he also made her acquaintance. Of course, 
they fell in love with her, and she became the only 
thing in life worth living for. They wooed her 
with equal ardor and fire, and so intense became 
their struggle for her that half the student-body took 
to wagering wildly on the result. Even “old” 
Moss, one day, after an astounding demonstration 
in his private laboratory by Paul, was guilty to the 
extent of a month’s salary of backing him to become 
the bridegroom of Doris Van Benschoten. 

In the end she solved the problem in her own way, 
to everybody’s satisfaction except Paul’s and Lloyd’s. 
Getting them together, she said that she really could 
not choose between them because she loved them 
both equally well; and that, unfortunately, since 
polyandry was not permitted in the United States 


122 THE SHADOW AND THE FLASH 


she would be compelled to forego the honor and 
happiness of marrying either of them. Each blamed 
the other for this lamentable outcome, and the 
bitterness between them grew more bitter. 

But things came to a head soon enough. It was 
at my home, after they had taken their degrees and 
dropped out of the world’s sight, that the beginning 
of the end came to pass. Both were men of means, 
with little inclination and no necessity for profes- 
sional life. My friendship and their mutual ani- 
mosity were the two things that linked them in any 
way together. While they were very often at my 
place, they made it a fastidious point to avoid each 
other on such visits, though it was inevitable, under 
the circumstances, that they should come upon each 
other occasionally. 

On the day I have in recollection, Paul Tichlorne 
had been mooning all morning in my study over a 
current scientific review. This left me free to my 
own affairs, and I was out among my roses when 
Lloyd Inwood arrived. Clipping and pruning and 
tacking the climbers on the porch, with my mouth 
full of nails, and Lloyd following me about and 
lending a hand now and again, we fell to discussing 


THE SHADOW AND THE FLASH 123 

the mythical race of invisible people, that strange 
and vagrant people the traditions of which have 
come down to us. Lloyd warmed to the talk in 
his nervous, jerky fashion, and was soon interro- 
gating the physical properties and possibilities of 
invisibility. A perfectly black object, he contended, 
would elude and defy the acutest vision. 

“Color is a sensation/’ he was saying. “It has 
no objective reality. Without light, we can see 
neither colors nor objects themselves. All objects 
are black in the dark, and in the dark it is impossible 
to see them. If no light strikes upon them, then 
no light is flung back from them to the eye, and so 
we have no vision-evidence of their being.” 

“But we see black objects in daylight,” I 
objected. 

“Very true,” he went on warmly. “And that 
is because they are not perfectly black. Were they 
perfectly black, absolutely black, as it were, we could 
not see them — ay, not in the blaze of a thousand 
suns could we see them ! And so I say, with the 
right pigments, properly compounded, an abso- 
lutely black paint could be produced which would 
render invisible whatever it was applied to.” 


124 


THE SHADOW AND THE FLASH 


“It would be a remarkable discovery,” I said 
non-committally, for the whole thing seemed too 
fantastic for aught but speculative purposes. 

“Remarkable !” Lloyd slapped me on the shoul- 
der. “I should say so. Why, old chap, to coat 
myself with such a paint would be to put the 
world at my feet. The secrets of kings and courts 
would be mine, the machinations of diplomats and 
politicians, the play of stock-gamblers, the plans 
of trusts and corporations. I could keep my hand 
on the inner pulse of things and become the greatest 
power in the world. And I — ” He broke off 
shortly, then added, “Well, I have begun my ex- 
periments, and I don’t mind telling you that I’m 
right in line for it.” 

A laugh from the doorway startled us. Paul 
Tichlorne was standing there, a smile of mockery 
on his lips. 

“You forget, my dear Lloyd,” he said. 

“Forget what?” 

“You forget,” Paul went on — “ah, you forget 
the shadow.” 

I saw Lloyd’s face drop, but he answered sneer- 
ingly, “ I can carry a sunshade, you know.” Then 


THE SHADOW AND THE FLASH 


125 


he turned suddenly and fiercely upon him. “Look 
here, Paul, you’ll keep out of this if you know what’s 
good for you.” 

A rupture seemed imminent, but Paul laughed 
good-naturedly. “I wouldn’t lay fingers on your 
dirty pigments. Succeed beyond your most sanguine 
expectations, yet you will always fetch up against 
the shadow. You can’t get away from it. Now I 
shall go on the very opposite tack. In the very 
nature of my proposition the shadow will be elimi- 
nated — ” 

“Transparency!” ejaculated Lloyd, instantly. 
“But it can’t be achieved.” 

“Oh, no; of course not.” And Paul shrugged 
his shoulders and strolled off down the brier-rose 
path. 

This was the beginning of it. Both men attacked 
the problem with all the tremendous energy for which 
they were noted, and with a rancor and bitterness 
that made me tremble for the success of either. 
Each trusted me to the utmost, and in the long weeks 
of experimentation that followed I was made a party 
to both sides, listening to their theorizings and wit- 
nessing their demonstrations. Never, by word or 


126 THE SHADOW AND THE FLASH 


sign, did I convey to either the slightest hint of the 
other’s progress, and they respected me for the seal 
I put upon my lips. 

Lloyd Inwood, after prolonged and unintermittent 
application, when the tension upon his mind and 
body became too great to bear, had a strange way 
of obtaining relief. He attended prize fights. It 
was at one of these brutal exhibitions, whither he 
had dragged me in order to tell his latest results, 
that his theory received striking confirmation. 

“Do you see that red-whiskered man ?” he asked, 
pointing across the ring to the fifth tier of seats on 
the opposite side. “And do you see the next man 
to him, the one in the white hat ? Well, there is 
quite a gap between them, is there not?” 

“Certainly,” I answered. “They are a seat 
apart. The gap is the unoccupied seat.” 

He leaned over to me and spoke seriously. “Be- 
tween the red-whiskered man and the white-hatted 
man sits Ben Wasson. You have heard me speak 
of him. He is the cleverest pugilist of his weight 
in the country. He is also a Caribbean negro, full- 
blooded, and the blackest in the United States. 
He has on a black overcoat buttoned up. I saw 


THE SHADOW AND THE FLASH 127 

him when he came in and took that seat. As soon 
as he sat down he disappeared. Watch closely; 
he may smile.” 

I was for crossing over to verify Lloyd’s state- 
ment, but he restrained me. “Wait,” he said. 

I waited and watched, till the red-whiskered man 
turned his head as though addressing the unoccupied 
seat; and then, in that empty space, I saw the rolling 
whites of a pair of eyes and the white double-crescent 
of two rows of teeth, and for the instant I could make 
out a negro’s face. But with the passing of the smile 
his visibility passed, and the chair seemed vacant as 
before. 

“Were he perfectly black, you could sit alongside 
him and not see him,” Lloyd said; and I confess 
the illustration was apt enough to make me well- 
nigh convinced. 

I visited Lloyd’s laboratory a number of times 
after that, and found him always deep in his search 
after the absolute black. His experiments covered 
all sorts of pigments, such as lamp-blacks, tars, 
carbonized vegetable matters, soots of oils and fats, 
and the various carbonized animal substances. 

“White light is composed of the seven primary 


128 THE SHADOW AND THE FLASH 


colors/’ he argued to me. “ But it is itself, of itself, 
invisible. Only by being reflected from objects do it 
and the objects become visible. But only that portion 
of it that is reflected becomes visible. For instance, 
here is a blue tobacco-box. The white light strikes 
against it, and, with one exception, all its component 
colors — violet, indigo, green, yellow, orange, and 
red — are absorbed. The one exception is blue. 
It is not absorbed, but reflected. Wherefore the 
tobacco-box gives us a sensation of blueness. We do 
not see the other colors because they are absorbed. 
We see only the blue. For the same reason grass 
is green. The green waves of white light are thrown 
upon our eyes.” 

“When we paint our houses, we do not apply 
color to them,” he said at another time. “What 
we do is to apply certain substances that have the 
property of absorbing from white light all the colors 
except those that we would have our houses appear. 
When a substance reflects all the colors to the eye, 
it seems to us white. When it absorbs all the colors, 
it is black. But, as I said before, we have as yet 
no perfect black. All the colors are not absorbed. 
The perfect black, guarding against high lights, 


THE SHADOW AND THE FLASH 


129 


will be utterly and absolutely invisible. Look at 
that, for example.” 

He pointed to the palette lying on his work-table. 
Different shades of black pigments were brushed 
on it. One, in particular, I could hardly see. It 
gave my eyes a blurring sensation, and I rubbed 
them and looked again. 

“That,” he said impressively, “is the blackest 
black you or any mortal man ever looked upon. 
But just you wait, and I’ll have a black so black 
that no mortal man will be able to look upon it — 
and see it!” 

On the other hand, I used to find Paul Tichlorne 
plunged as deeply into the study of light polarization, 
diffraction, and interference, single and double refrac- 
tion, and all manner of strange organic compounds. 

“Transparency: a state or quality of body which 
permits all rays of light to pass through,” he defined 
for me. “That is what I am seeking. Lloyd blun- 
ders up against the shadow with his perfect opaque- 
ness. But I escape it. A transparent body casts 
no shadow; neither does it reflect light-waves — 
that is, the perfectly transparent does not. So, 
avoiding high lights, not only will such a body cast 


i 3 o THE SHADOW AND THE FLASH 


no shadow, but, since it reflects no light, it will also 
be invisible.” 

We were standing by the window at another 
time. Paul was engaged in polishing a number of 
lenses, which were ranged along the sill. Suddenly, 
after a pause in the conversation, he said, “Oh! 
Fve dropped a lens. Stick your head out, old 
man, and see where it went to.” 

Out I started to thrust my head, but a sharp 
blow on the forehead caused me to recoil. I rubbed 
my bruised brow and gazed with reproachful inquiry 
at Paul, who was laughing in gleeful, boyish fashion. 

“Well?” he said. 

“Well?” I echoed. 

“Why don’t you investigate?” he demanded. 
And investigate I did. Before thrusting out my 
head, my senses, automatically active, had told 
me there was nothing there, that nothing inter- 
vened between me and out-of-doors, that the aper- 
ture of the window opening was utterly empty. I 
stretched forth my hand and felt a hard object, 
smooth and cool and flat, which my touch, out of 
its experience, told me to be glass. I looked again, 
but could see positively nothing. 


THE SHADOW AND THE FLASH 131 

“ White quartzose sand,” Paul rattled off, “sodic 
carbonate, slaked lime, cullet, manganese peroxide 

— there you have it, the finest French plate glass, 
made by the great St. Gobain Company, who made 
the finest plate glass in the world, and this is the 
finest piece they ever made. It cost a king’s ransom. 
But look at it! You can’t see it. You don’t know 
it’s there till you run your head against it. 

“ Eh, old boy ! That’s merely an object-lesson 

— certain elements, in themselves opaque, yet so 
compounded as to give a resultant body which is 
transparent. But that is a matter of inorganic 
chemistry, you say. Very true. But I dare to assert, 
standing here on my two feet, that in the organic 
I can duplicate whatever occurs in the inorganic. 

“Here!” He held a test-tube between me and 
the light, and I noted the cloudy or muddy liquid 
it contained. He emptied the contents of another 
test-tube into it, and almost instantly it became clear 
and sparkling. 

“Or here!” With quick, nervous movements 
among his array of test-tubes, he turned a white 
solution to a wine color, and a light yellow solution 
to a dark brown. He dropped a piece of litmus 


1 3 2 


THE SHADOW AND THE FLASH 


paper into an acid, when it changed instantly to 
red, and on floating it in an alkali it turned as 
quickly to blue. 

“The litmus paper is still the litmus paper,” he 
enunciated in the formal manner of the lecturer. 
“I have not changed it into something else. Then 
what did I do ? I merely changed the arrangement 
of its molecules. Where, at first, it absorbed all 
colors from the light but red, its molecular structure 
was so changed that it absorbed red and all colors 
except blue. And so it goes, ad infinitum. Now, 
what I purpose to do is this.” He paused for a 
space. “I purpose to seek — ay, and to find — 
the proper reagents, which, acting upon the living 
organism, will bring about molecular changes analo- 
gous to those you have just witnessed. But these 
reagents, which I shall find, and for that matter, 
upon which I already have my hands, will not turn 
the living body to blue or red or black, but they 
will turn it to transparency. All light will pass 
through it. It will be invisible. It will cast no 
shadow.” 

A few weeks later I went hunting with Paul. He 
had been promising me for some time that I should 


THE SHADOW AND THE FLASH 


T 33 


have the pleasure of shooting over a wonderful 
dog — the most wonderful dog, in fact, that ever 
man shot over, so he averred, and continued to aver 
till my curiosity was aroused. But on the morn- 
ing in question I was disappointed, for there was 
no dog in evidence. 

“ Don’t see him about,” Paul remarked uncon- 
cernedly, and we set off across the fields. 

I could not imagine, at the time, what was ailing 
me, but I had a feeling of some impending and deadly 
illness. My nerves were all awry, and, from the 
astounding tricks they played me, my senses seemed 
to have run riot. Strange sounds disturbed me. 
At times I heard the swish-swish of grass being 
shoved aside, and once the patter of feet across a 
patch of stony ground. 

“Did you hear anything, Paul?” I asked once. 

But he shook his head, and thrust his feet steadily 
forward. 

While climbing a fence, I heard the low, eager 
whine of a dog, apparently from within a couple of 
feet of me; but on looking about me I saw 
nothing. 

I dropped to the ground, limp and trembling. 


134 


THE SHADOW AND THE FLASH 


“Paul,” I said, “we had better return to the 
house. I am afraid I am going to be sick.” 

“Nonsense, old man,” he answered. “The sun- 
shine has gone to your head like wine. You’ll be 
all right. It’s famous weather.” 

But, passing along a narrow path through a clump 
of cottonwoods, some object brushed against my 
legs and I stumbled and nearly fell. I looked with 
sudden anxiety at Paul. 

“What’s the matter?” he asked. “Tripping 
over your own feet?” 

I kept my tongue between my teeth and plodded 
on, though sore perplexed and thoroughly satisfied 
that some acute and mysterious malady had attacked 
my nerves. So far my eyes had escaped; but, when 
we got to the open fields again, even my vision went 
back on me. Strange flashes of vari-colored, rain- 
bow light began to appear and disappear on the 
path before me. Still, I managed to keep myself 
in hand, till the vari-colored lights persisted for a 
space of fully twenty seconds, dancing and flashing 
in continuous play. Then I sat down, weak and 
shaky. 

“It’s all up with me,” I gasped, covering my eyes 


THE SHADOW AND THE FLASH 


i35 


with my hands. “It has attacked my eyes. Paul, 
take me home.” 

But Paul laughed long and loud. “What did 
I tell you ? — the most wonderful dog, eh ? Well, 
what do you think?” 

He turned partly from me and began to whistle. 
I heard the patter of feet, the panting of a heated 
animal, and the unmistakable yelp of a dog. Then 
Paul stooped down and apparently fondled the 
empty air. 

“Here! Give me your fist.” 

And he rubbed my hand over the cold nose and 
jowls of a dog. A dog it certainly was, with the 
shape and the smooth, short coat of a pointer. 

Suffice to say, I speedily recovered my spirits and 
control. Paul put a collar about the animal’s neck 
and tied his handkerchief to its tail. And then was 
vouchsafed us the remarkable sight of an empty 
collar and a waving handkerchief cavorting over 
the fields. It was something to see that collar and 
handkerchief pin a bevy of quail in a clump of locusts 
and remain rigid and immovable till we had flushed 
the birds. 

Now and again the dog emitted the vari-colored 


136 THE SHADOW AND THE FLASH 

light-flashes I have mentioned. The erne thing, 
Paul explained, which he had not anticipated and 
which he doubted could be overcome. 

“ They’re a large family,” he said, “these sun dogs, 
wind dogs, rainbows, halos, and parhelia. They 
are produced by refraction of light from mineral 
and ice crystals, from mist, rain, spray, and no end 
of things; and I am afraid they are the penalty I 
must pay for transparency. I escaped Lloyd’s 
shadow only to fetch up against the rainbow flash.” 

A couple of days later, before the entrance to 
Paul’s laboratory, I encountered a terrible stench. 
So overpowering was it that it was easy to discover 
the source — a mass of putrescent matter on the 
doorstep which in general outlines resembled a dog. 

Paul was startled when he investigated my find. 
It was his invisible dog, or rather, what had been 
his invisible dog, for it was now plainly visible. It 
had been playing about but a few minutes before 
in all health and strength. Closer examination re- 
vealed that the skull had been crushed by some 
heavy blow. While it was strange that the animal 
should have been killed, the inexplicable thing was 
that it should so quickly decay. 


THE SHADOW AND THE FLASH 137 


1 


“The reagents I injected into its system were 
harmless,” Paul explained. “Yet they were power- 
ful, and it appears that when death comes they 
force practically instantaneous disintegration. Re- 
markable ! Most remarkable ! Well, the only thing 
is not to die. They do not harm so long as one 
lives. But I do wonder who smashed in that dog’s 
head.” 

Light, however, was thrown upon this when a 
frightened housemaid brought the news that Gaffer 
Bedshaw had that very morning, not more than an 
hour back, gone violently insane, and was strapped 
down at home, in the huntsman’s lodge, where he 
raved of a battle with a ferocious and gigantic beast 
that he had encountered in the Tichlorne pasture. 
He claimed that the thing, whatever it was, was in- 
visible, that with his own eyes he had seen that 
it was invisible; wherefore his tearful wife and 
daughters shook their heads, and wherefore he but 
waxed the more violent, and the gardener and the 
coachman tightened the straps by another hole. 

Nor, while Paul Tichlorne was thus successfully 
mastering the problem of invisibility, was Lloyd 
Inwood a whit behind. I went over in answer to 


138 THE SHADOW AND THE FLASH 


a message of his to come and see how he was getting 
on. Now his laboratory occupied an isolated situa- 
tion in the midst of his vast grounds. It was built 
in a pleasant little glade, surrounded on all sides 
by a dense forest growth, and was to be gained by 
way of a winding and erratic path. But I had trav- 
elled that path so often as to know every foot of it, 
and conceive my surprise when I came upon the 
glade and found no laboratory. The quaint shed 
structure with its red sandstone chimney was not. 
Nor did it look as if it ever had been. There were 
no signs of ruin, no debris, nothing. 

I started to walk across what had once been its 
site. “This,” I said to myself, “should be where 
the step went up to the door.” Barely were the 
words out of my mouth when I stubbed my toe on 
some obstacle, pitched forward, and butted my 
head into something that felt very much like a door. 
I reached out my hand. It was a door. I found the 
knob and turned it. And at once, as the door 
swung inward on its hinges, the whole interior of 
the laboratory impinged upon my vision. Greeting 
Lloyd, I closed the door and backed up the path a 
few paces. I could see nothing of the building. 


THE SHADOW AND THE FLASH 139 

Returning and opening the door, at once all the fur- 
niture and every detail of the interior were visible. 
It was indeed startling, the sudden transition from 
void to light and form and color. 

“What do you think of it, eh?” Lloyd asked, 
wringing my hand. “I slapped a couple of coats 
of absolute black on the outside yesterday afternoon 
to see how it worked. How’s your head ? You 
bumped it pretty solidly, I imagine.” 

“Never mind that,” he interrupted my congratu- 
lations. “I’ve something better for you to do.” 

While he talked he began to strip, and when he 
stood naked before me he thrust a pot and brush 
into my hand and said, “Here, give me a coat of 
this.” 

It was an oily, shellac-like stuff, which spread 
quickly and easily over the skin and dried imme- 
diately. 

“Merely preliminary and precautionary,” he ex- 
plained when I had finished; “but now for the real 
stuff.” 

I picked up another pot he indicated, and glanced 
inside, but could see nothing. 

“It’s empty,” I said. 


i 4 o THE SHADOW AND THE FLASH 

“Stick your finger in it.” 

I obeyed, and was aware of a sensation of cool 
moistness. On withdrawing my hand I glanced 
at the forefinger, the one I had immersed, but it 
had disappeared. I mo/ed it, and knew from the 
alternate tension and relaxation of the muscles 
that I moved it, but it defied my sense of sight. To 
all appearances I had been shorn of a finger; nor 
could I get any visual impression of it till I ex- 
tended it under the skylight and saw its shadow 
plainly blotted on the floor. 

Lloyd chuckled. “Now spread it on, and keep 
your eyes open.” 

I dipped the brush into the seemingly empty pot, 
and gave him a long stroke across his chest. With 
the passage of the brush the living flesh disappeared 
from beneath. I covered his right leg, and he was 
a one-legged man defying all laws of gravitation. 
And so, stroke by stroke, member by member, I 
painted Lloyd Inwood into nothingness. It was a 
creepy experience, and I was glad when naught 
remained in sight but his burning black eyes, poised 
apparently unsupported in mid-air. 

“I have a refined and harmless solution for them,” 


THE SHADOW AND THE FLASH 141 

he said. “ A fine spray with an air-brush, and 
presto ! I am not.” 

This deftly accomplished, he said, “Now I shall 
move about, and do you tell me what sensations 
you experience.” 

“In the first place, I cannot see you,” I said, and 
I could hear his gleeful laugh from the midst of the 
emptiness. “Of course,” I continued, “you can- 
not escape your shadow, but that was to be ex- 
pected. When you pass between my eye and an 
object, the object disappears, but so unusual and 
incomprehensible is its disappearance that it seems 
to me as though my eyes had blurred. When you 
move rapidly, I experience a bewilder’~g succession 
of blurs. The blurring sensation makes my eyes 
ache and my brain tired.” 

“Have you any other warnings of my presence ?” 
he asked. 

“No, and yes,” I answered. “When you are near 
me I have feelings similar to those produced by 
dank warehouses, gloomy crypts, and deep mines. 
And as sailors feel the loom of the land on dark 
nights, so I think I feel the loom of your body. 
But it is all very vague and intangible.” 


142 


THE SHADOW AND THE FLASH 


Long we talked that last morning in his laboratory ; 
and when I turned to go, he put his unseen hand 
in mine with nervous grip, and said, “Now I shall 
conquer the world !” And I could not dare to tell 
him of Paul Tichlorne’s equal success. 

At home I found a note from Paul, asking me to 
come up immediately, and it was high noon when 
I came spinning up the driveway on my wheel. 
Paul called me from the tennis court, and I dis- 
mounted and went over. But the court was empty. 
As I stood there, gaping open-mouthed, a tennis 
ball struck me on the arm, and as I turned about, 
another whizzed past my ear. For aught I could 
see of my ascailant, they came whirling at me from 
out of space, and right well was I peppered with 
them. But when the balls already flung at me 
began to come back for a second whack, I realized 
the situation. Seizing a racquet and keeping my 
eyes open, I quickly saw a rainbow flash appearing 
and disappearing and darting over the ground. I 
took out after it, and when I laid the racquet upon 
it for a half-dozen stout blows, Paul’s voice rang 
out : 

“ Enough ! Enough ! Oh ! Ouch ! Stop ! You’re 


THE SHADOW AND THE FLASH 


I 43 


landing on my naked skin, you know ! Ow ! O-w-w ! 
ril be good ! I’ll be good ! I only wanted you to 
see my metamorphosis,” he said ruefully, and I 
imagined he was rubbing his hurts. 

A few minutes later we were playing tennis — 
a handicap on my part, for I could have no knowl- 
edge of his position save when all the angles be- 
tween himself, the sun, and me, were in proper con- 
junction. Then he flashed, and only then. But 
the flashes were more brilliant than the rainbow — 
purest blue, most delicate violet, brightest yellow, 
and all the intermediary shades, with the scintil- 
lant brilliancy of the diamond, dazzling, blinding, 
iridescent. 

But in the midst of our play I felt a sudden cold 
chill, reminding me of deep mines and gloomy 
crypts, such a chill as I had experienced that very 
morning. The next moment, close to the net, I 
saw a ball rebound in mid-air and empty space, 
and at the same instant, a score of feet away, Paul 
Tichlorne emitted a rainbow flash. It could not 
be he from whom the ball had rebounded, and with 
sickening dread I realized that Lloyd Inwood had 
come upon the scene. To make sure, I looked for 


144 


THE SHADOW AND THE FLASH 


his shadow, and there it was, a shapeless blotch the 
girth of his body, (the sun was overhead), moving 
along the ground. I remembered his threat, and 
felt sure that all the long years of rivalry were about 
to culminate in uncanny battle. 

I cried a warning to Paul, and heard a snarl as 
of a wild beast, and an answering snarl. I saw the 
dark blotch move swiftly across the court, and a 
brilliant burst of vari-colored light moving with 
equal swiftness to meet it; and then shadow and 
flash came together and there was the sound of un- 
seen blows. The net went down before my fright- 
ened eyes. I sprang toward the fighters, crying: 

“For God’s sake!” 

But their locked bodies smote against my knees, 
and I was overthrown. 

“You keep out of this, old man!” I heard the 
voice of Lloyd Inwood from out of the emptiness. 
And then Paul’s voice crying, “Yes, we’ve had 
enough of peacemaking!” 

From the sound of their voices I knew they had 
separated. I could not locate Paul, and so ap- 
proached the shadow that represented Lloyd. But 
from the other side came a stunning blow on the 


THE SHADOW AND THE FLASH 145 

point of my jaw, and I heard Paul scream angrily, 
“Now will you keep away ?” 

Then they came together again, the impact of 
their blows, their groans and gasps, and the swift 
flashings and shadow-movings telling plainly of the 
deadliness of the struggle. 

I shouted for help, and Gaffer Bedshaw came run- 
ning into the court. I could see, as he approached, 
that he was looking at me strangely, but he collided 
with the combatants and was hurled headlong to 
the ground. With despairing shriek and a cry 
of “O Lord, Fve got ’em!” he sprang to his feet 
and tore madly out of the court. 

I could do nothing, so I sat up, fascinated and 
powerless, and watched the struggle. The noon- 
day sun beat down with dazzling brightness on the 
naked tennis court. And it was naked. All I 
could see was the blotch of shadow and the rain- 
bow flashes, the dust rising from the invisible feet, 
the earth tearing up from beneath the straining 
foot-grips, and the wire screen bulge once or twice 
as their bodies hurled against it. That was all, 
and after a time even that ceased. There were no 
more flashes, and the shadow had become long and 


146 THE SHADOW AND THE FLASH 


stationary; and I remembered their set boyish 
faces when they clung to the roots in the deep cool- 
ness of the pool. 

They found me an hour afterward. Some ink- 
ling of what had happened got to the servants and 
they quitted the Tichlorne service in a body. Gaffer 
Bedshaw never recovered from the second shock 
he received, and is confined in a madhouse, hope- 
lessly incurable. The secrets of their marvellous 
discoveries died with Paul and Lloyd, both labora- 
tories being destroyed by grief-stricken relatives. 
As for myself, I no longer care for chemical research, 
and science is a tabooed topic in my household. 
I have returned to my roses. Nature’s colors are 
good enough for me. 


ALL GOLD CANYON 
















■ 



























- V 












ALL GOLD CANYON* 


I T was the green heart of the canyon, where the 
walls swerved back from the rigid plan and 
relieved their harshness of line by making a 
little sheltered nook and filling it to the brim with 
sweetness and roundness and softness. Here all 
things rested. Even the narrow stream ceased its 
turbulent down-rush long enough to form a quiet 
pool. Knee-deep in the water, with drooping head 
and half-shut eyes, drowsed a red-coated, many- 
antlered buck. 

On one side, beginning at the very lip of the 
pool, was a tiny meadow, a cool, resilient surface 
of green that extended to the base of the frowning 
wall. Beyond the pool a gentle slope of earth ran 
up and up to meet the opposing wall. Fine grass 
covered the slope — grass that was spangled with 
flowers, with here and there patches of color, orange 
and purple and golden. Below, the canyon was 
shut in. There was no view. The walls leaned 

* Copyright, 1905, by The Century Company. 

149 


ALL GOLD CANYON 


150 

together abruptly and the canyon ended in a chaos 
of rocks, moss-covered and hidden by a green 
screen of vines and creepers and boughs of trees. 
Up the canyon rose far hills and peaks, the big foot- 
hills, pine-covered and remote. And far beyond, 
like clouds upon the border of the sky, towered 
minarets of white, where the Sierra’s eternal snows 
flashed austerely the blazes of the sun. 

There was no dust in the canyon. The leaves 
and flowers were clean and virginal. The grass 
was young velvet. Over the pool three cotton- 
woods sent their snowy fluff's fluttering down the 
quiet air. On the slope the blossoms of the wine- 
wooded manzanita filled the air with springtime 
odors, while the leaves, wise with experience, were 
already beginning their vertical twist against the 
coming aridity of summer. In the open spaces on 
the slope, beyond the farthest shadow-reach of the 
manzanita, poised the mariposa lilies, like so many 
flights of jewelled moths suddenly arrested and on 
the verge of trembling into flight again. Here and 
there that woods harlequin, the madrone, permitting 
itself to be caught in the act of changing its pea- 
green trunk to madder-red, breathed its fragrance 


ALL GOLD CANYON 


151 

into the air from great clusters of waxen bells. 
Creamy white were these bells, shaped like lilies- 
of-the-valley, with the sweetness of perfume that is 
of the springtime. 

There was not a sigh of wind. The air was 
drowsy with its weight of perfume. It was a sweet- 
ness that would have been cloying had the air been 
heavy and humid. But the air was sharp and thin. 
It was as starlight transmuted into atmosphere, shot 
through and warmed by sunshine, and flower- 
drenched with sweetness. 

An occasional butterfly drifted in and out through 
the patches of light and shade. And from all about 
rose the low and sleepy hum of mountain bees — 
feasting Sybarites that jostled one another good- 
naturedly at the board, nor found time for rough 
discourtesy. So quietly did the little stream drip 
and ripple its way through the canyon that it spoke 
only in faint and occasional gurgles. The voice of 
the stream was as a drowsy whisper, ever inter- 
rupted by dozings and silences, ever lifted again in 
the awakenings. 

The motion of all things was a drifting in the 
heart of the canyon. Sunshine and butterflies drifted 


152 


ALL GOLD CANYON 


in and out among the trees. The hum of the bees 
and the whisper of the stream were a drifting of 
sound. And the drifting sound and drifting color 
seemed to weave together in the making of a deli- 
cate and intangible fabric which was the spirit of 
the place. It was a spirit of peace that was not of 
death, but of smooth-pulsing life, of quietude that 
was not silence, of movement that was not action, 
of repose that was quick with existence without 
being violent with struggle and travail. The spirit 
of the place was the spirit of the peace of the living, 
somnolent with the easement and content of pros- 
perity, and undisturbed by rumors of far wars. 

The red-coated, many-antlered buck acknowl- 
edged the lordship of the spirit of the place and 
dozed knee-deep in the cool, shaded pool. There 
seemed no flies to vex him and he was languid with 
rest. Sometimes his ears moved when the stream 
awoke and whispered; but they moved lazily, with 
foreknowledge that it was merely the stream grown 
garrulous at discovery that it had slept. 

But there came a time when the buck’s ears 
lifted and tensed with swift eagerness for sound. 
His head was turned down the canyon. His sensi- 


ALL GOLD CANYON 


i53 


tive, quivering nostrils scented the air. His eyes 
could not pierce the green screen through which the 
stream rippled away, but to his ears came the voice 
of a man. It was a steady, monotonous, singsong 
voice. Once the buck heard the harsh clash of 
metal upon rock. At the sound he snorted with a 
sudden start that jerked him through the air from 
water to meadow, and his feet sank into the young 
velvet, while he pricked his ears and again scented 
the air. Then he stole across the tiny meadow, 
pausing once and again to listen, and faded away 
out of the canyon like a wraith, soft-footed and 
without sound. 

The clash of steel-shod soles against the rocks 
began to be heard, and the man’s voice grew louder. 
It was raised in a sort of chant and became dis- 
tinct with nearness, so that the words could be 
heard : 

“ Tu’n around an’ tu’n yo’ face 
Untoe them sweet hills of grace 

(D’ pow’rs of sin yo’ am scornin’ !). 

Look about an’ look aroun’, 

Fling yo’ sin-pack on d’ groun’ 

(Yo’ will meet wid d’ Lord in d’ mornin’ !).” 


!54 


ALL GOLD CANYON 


A sound of scrambling accompanied the song, 
and the spirit of the place fled away on the heels 
of the red-coated buck. The green screen was 
burst asunder, and a man peered out at the meadow 
and the pool and the sloping side-hill. He was a 
deliberate sort of man. He took in the scene with 
one embracing glance, then ran his eyes over the 
details to verify the general impression. Then, and 
not until then, did he open his mouth in vivid and 
solemn approval: 

“Smoke of life an’ snakes of purgatory! Will 
you just look at that ! Wood an’ water an’ grass an’ 
a side-hill ! A pocket-hunter’s delight an’ a cayuse’s 
paradise ! Cool green for tired eyes ! Pink pills 
for pale people ain’t in it. A secret pasture for 
prospectors and a resting-place for tired burros, by 
damn !” 

He was a sandy-complexioned man in whose face 
geniality and humor seemed the salient characteris- 
tics. It was a mobile face, quick-changing to in- 
ward mood and thought. Thinking was in him a 
visible process. Ideas chased across his face like 
wind-flaws across the surface of a lake. His hair, 
sparse and unkempt of growth, was as indeterminate 


ALL GOLD CANYON 


I 55 


and colorless as his complexion. It would seem 
that all the color of his frame had gone into his 
eyes, for they were startlingly blue. Also, they 
were laughing and merry eyes, within them 
much of the naivete and wonder of the child; 
and yet, in an unassertive way, they contained 
much of calm self-reliance and strength of purpose 
founded upon self-experience and experience of the 
world. 

From out the screen of vines and creepers he 
flung ahead of him a miner’s pick and shovel and 
gold-pan. Then he crawled out himself into the 
open. He was clad in faded overalls and black 
cotton shirt, with hobnailed brogans on his feet, 
and on his head a hat whose shapelessness and 
stains advertised the rough usage of wind and rain 
and sun and camp-smoke. He stood erect, seeing 
wide-eyed the secrecy of the scene and sensuously 
inhaling the warm, sweet breath of the canyon- 
garden through nostrils that dilated and quivered 
with delight. His eyes narrowed to laughing slits 
of blue, his face wreathed itself in joy, and his mouth 
curled in a smile as he cried aloud : 

“Jumping dandelions and happy hollyhocks, but 


156 ALL GOLD CANYON 

that smells good to me! Talk about your attar o’ 
roses an’ cologne factories! They ain’t in it! 

He had the habit of soliloquy. His quick- 
changing facial expressions might tell every thought 
and mood, but the tongue, perforce, ran hard after, 
repeating, like a second Boswell. 

The man lay down on the lip of the pool and 
drank long and deep of its water. “Tastes good to 
me,” he- murmured, lifting his head and gazing 
across the pool at the side-hill, while he wiped his 
mouth with the back of his hand. The side-hill 
attracted his attention. Still lying on his stomach, 
he studied the hill formation long and carefully. 
It was a practised eye that travelled up the slope 
to the crumbling canyon-wall and back and down 
again to the edge of the pool. He scrambled to 
his feet and favored the side-hill with a second 
survey. 

“Looks good to me,” he concluded, picking up 
his pick and shovel and gold-pan. 

He crossed the stream below the pool, stepping 
agilely from stone to stone. Where the side-hill 
touched the water he dug up a shovelful of dirt and 
put it into the gold-pan. He squatted down, hold- 


ALL GOLD CANYON 


i57 


ing the pan in his two hands, and partly immersing 
it in the stream. Then he imparted to the pan a 
deft circular motion that sent the water sluicing in 
and out through the dirt and gravel. The larger 
and the lighter particles worked to the surface, and 
these, by a skilful dipping movement of the pan, 
he spilled out and over the edge. Occasionally, to 
expedite matters, he rested the pan and with his 
fingers raked out the large pebbles and pieces of rock. 

The contents of the pan diminished rapidly until 
only fine dirt and the smallest bits of gravel re- 
mained. At this stage he began to work very de- 
liberately and carefully. It was fine washing, and 
he washed fine and finer, with a keen scrutiny and 
delicate and fastidious touch. At last the pan 
seemed empty of everything but water; but with 
a quick semicircular flirt that sent the water flying 
over the shallow rim into the stream, he disclosed a 
layer of black sand on the bottom of the pan. So 
thin was this layer that it was like a streak of paint. 
He examined it closely. In the midst of it was a 
tiny golden speck. He dribbled a little water in 
over the depressed edge of the pan. With a quick 
flirt he sent the water sluicing across the bottom, 


ALL GOLD CANYON 


158 

turning the grains of black sand over and over. 
A second tiny golden speck rewarded his effort. 

The washing had now become very fine — fine 
beyond all need of ordinary placer-mining. He 
worked the black sand, a small portion at a time, 
up the shallow rim of the pan. Each small portion 
he examined sharply, so that his eyes saw every 
grain of it before he allowed it to slide over the 
edge and away. Jealously, bit by bit, he let the 
black sand slip away. A golden speck, no larger 
than a pin-point, appeared on the rim, and by his 
manipulation of the water it returned to the bottom 
of the pan. And in such fashion another speck 
was disclosed, and another. Great was his care of 
them. Like a shepherd he herded his flock of 
golden specks so that not one should be lost. At 
last, of the pan of dirt nothing remained but his 
golden herd. He counted it, and then, after all 
his labor, sent it flying out of the pan with one final 
swirl of water. 

But his blue eyes were shining with desire as he 
rose to his feet. “ Seven, ” he muttered aloud, 
asserting the sum of the specks for which he had 
toiled so hard ana which he had so wantonly thrown 


ALL GOLD CANYON 


I 59 


away. “ Seven, ” he repeated, with the emphasis of 
one trying to impress a number on his memory. 

He stood still a long while, surveying the hill- 
side. In his eyes was a curiosity, new-aroused 
and burning. There was an exultance about 
his bearing and a keenness like that of a hunting 
anim 1 catching the fresh scent of game. 

He moved down the stream a few steps and took 
a second panful of dirt. 

Again came the careful washing, the jealous herd- 
ing of the golden specks, and the wantonness with 
which he sent them flying into the stream when he 
had counted their number. 

“Five,” he muttered, and repeated, “five.” 

He could not forbear another survey of the hill 
before filling the pan farther down the stream. 
His golden herds diminished. “Four, three, two, 
two, one,” were his memory-tabulations as he 
moved down the stream. When but one speck of 
gold rewarded his washing, he stopped and built a 
fire of dry twigs. Into this he thrust the gold- 
pan and burned it till it was blue-black. He held 
up the pan and examined it critically. Then he 
nodded approbation. Against such a color-back- 


160 ALL GOLD CANYON 

ground he could defy the tiniest yellow speck to 
elude him. 

Still moving down the stream, he panned again. 
A single speck was his reward. A third pan con- 
tained no gold at all. Not satisfied with this, he 
panned three times again, taking his shovels of dirt 
within a foot of one another. Each pan ^oved 
empty of gold, and the fact, instead of discouraging 
him, seemed to give him satisfaction. His elation 
increased with each barren washing, until he arose, 
exclaiming jubilantly: 

“ If it ain’t the real thing, may God knock off my 
head with sour apples !” 

Returning to where he had started operations, he 
began to pan up the stream. At first his golden 
herds increased — increased prodigiously. “ Four- 
teen, eighteen, twenty-one, twenty-six,” ran his 
memory tabulations. Just above the pool he struck 
his richest pan — thirty-five colors. 

“ Almost enough to save,” he remarked regret- 
fully as he allowed the water to sweep them away. 

The sun climbed to the top of the sky. The man 
worked on. Pan by pan, he went up the stream, 
the tally of results steadily decreasing. 


ALL GOLD CANYON 


161 


“It's just booful, the way it peters out,” he exulted 
when a shovelful of dirt contained no more than a 
single speck of gold. 

And when no specks at all were found in several 
pans, he straightened up and favored the hillside 
with a confident glance. 

“Ah, ha! Mr. Pocket!” he cried out, as though 
to an auditor hidden somewhere above him be- 
neath the surface of the slope. “Ah, ha! Mr. 
Pocket ! I’m a-comin’, Pm a-comin’, an’ Pm 
shorely gwine to get yer! You heah me, Mr. 
Pocket ? Pm gwine to get yer as shore as punkins 
ain’t cauliflowers!” 

He turned and flung a measuring glance at the 
sun poised above him in the azure of the cloudless 
sky. Then he went down the canyon, following 
the line of shovel-holes he had made in filling the 
pans. He crossed the stream below the pool and 
disappeared through the green screen. There was 
little opportunity for the spirit of the place to re- 
turn with its quietude and repose, for the man’s 
voice, raised in ragtime song, still dominated the 
canyon with possession. 

After a time, with a greater clashing of steel-shod 


M 


162 


ALL GOLD CANYON 


feet on rock, he returned. The green screen was 
tremendously agitated. It surged back and forth 
in the throes of a struggle. There was a loud 
grating and clanging of metal. The man’s voice 
leaped to a higher pitch and was sharp with im- 
perativeness. A large body plunged and panted. 
There was a snapping and ripping and rending, and 
amid a shower of falling leaves a horse burst through 
the screen. On its back was a pack, and from this 
trailed broken vines and torn creepers. The animal 
gazed with astonished eyes at the scene into which 
it had been precipitated, then dropped its head to 
the grass and began contentedly to graze. A second 
horse scrambled into view, slipping once on the 
mossy rocks and regaining equilibrium when its 
hoofs sank into the yielding surface of the meadow. 
It was riderless, though on its back was a high- 
horned Mexican saddle, scarred and discolored by 
long usage. 

The man brought up the rear. He threw off 
pack and saddle, with an eye to camp location, and 
gave the animals their freedom to graze. He un- 
packed his food and got out frying-pan and coffee- 
pot. He gathered an armful of dry wood, and with 
a few stones made a place for his fire. 


ALL GOLD CANYON 


163 


“My!” he said, “but I’ve got an appetite. I 
could scoff iron-filings an’ horseshoe nails an’ 
thank you kindly, ma’am, for a second helpin’.” 

He straightened up, and, while he reached for 
matches in the pocket of his overalls, his eyes 
travelled across the pool to the side-hill. His fingers 
had clutched the match-box, but they relaxed their 
hold and the hand came out empty. The man 
wavered perceptibly. He looked at his preparations 
for cooking and he looked at the hill. 

“Guess I’ll take another whack at her,” he con- 
cluded, starting to cross the stream. 

“They ain’t no sense in it, I know,” he mumbled 
apologetically. “But keepin’ grub back an hour 
ain’t goin’ to hurt none, I reckon.” 

A few feet back from his first line of test-pans he 
started a second line. The sun dropped down the 
western sky, the shadows lengthened, but the man 
worked on. He began a third line of te^-pans. 
He was cross-cutting the hillside, line by line, as he 
ascended. The centre of each line produced the 
richest pans, while the ends came where no colors 
showed in the pan. And as he ascended the hill- 
side the lines grew perceptibly shorter. The regu- 


164 


ALL GOLD CANYON 


larity with which their length diminished served to 
indicate that somewhere up the slope the last line 
would be so short as to have scarcely length at all, 
and that beyond could come only a point. The 
design was growing into an inverted “V.” The 
converging sides of this “V” marked the boun- 
daries of the gold-bearing dirt. 

The apex of the “V” was evidently the man’s 
goal. Often he ran his eye along the converging 
sides and on up the hill, trying to divine the apex, 
the point where the gold-bearing dirt must cease. 
Here resided “Mr. Pocket” — for so the man 
familiarly addressed the imaginary point above 
him on the slope, crying out: 

“Come down out o’ that, Mr. Pocket! Be right 
smart an’ agreeable, an’ come down!” 

“All right,” he would add later, in a voice re- 
signed to determination. “All right, Mr. Pocket. 
It’s pK‘n to me I got to come right up an’ snatch 
you out bald-headed. An’ I’ll do it! I’ll do it!” 
he would threaten still later. 

Each pan he carried down to the water to wash, 
and as he went higher up the hill the pans grew 
richer, until he began to save the gold in an empty 


ALL GOLD CANYON 165 

baking-powder can which he carried carelessly in 
his hip-pocket. So engrossed was he in his toil that 
he did not notice the long twilight of oncoming 
night. It was not until he tried vainly to see the 
gold colors in the bottom of the pan that he realized 
the passage of time. He straightened up abruptly. 4 
An expression of whimsical wonderment and awe 
overspread his face as he drawled : 

“Gosh darn my buttons! if I didn’t plumb for- 
get dinner!” 

He stumbled across the stream in the darkness 
and lighted his long-delayed fire. Flapjacks and 
bacon and warmed-over beans constituted his sup- 
per. Then he smck^d a pipe by the smouldering 
coals, listening to the night noises and watching 
the moonlight stream through the canyon. After 
that he unrolled his bed, took off his heavy shoes, 
and pulled the blankets up to his chin. His face 
showed white in the moonlight, like the face of a 
corpse. But it was a corpse that knew its resur- 
rection, for the man rose suddenly on one elbow 
and gazed across at his hillside. 

“Good night, Mr. Pocket,” he called sleepily. 
“Good night.” 


i66 


ALL GOLD CANYON 


He slept through the early gray of morning until 
the direct rays of the sun smote his closed eyelids, 
when he awoke with a start and looked about him 
until he had established the continuity of his exist- 
ence and identified his present self with the days 
previously lived. 

To dress, he had merely to buckle on his shoes. 
He glanced at his fireplace and at his hillside, 
wavered, but fought down the temptation and 
started the fire. 

“Keep yer shirt on, Bill; keep yer shirt on,” he 
admonished himself. “What’s the good of rushin’ ? 
No use in gettin’ all het up an’ sweaty. Mr. Pocket ’ll 
wait for you. He ain’t a-rurmin’ away before you 
can get yer breakfast. Now, what you want, Bill, 
is something fresh in yer bill o’ fare. So it’s up to 
you to go an’ get it.” 

He cut a short pole at the water’s edge and drew 
from one of his pockets a bit of line and a draggled 
fly that had once been a royal coachman. 

“Mebbe they’ll bite in the early morning,” he 
muttered, as he made his first cast into the pool. 
And a moment later he was gleefully crying: 
“What ’d I tell you, eh ? What ’d I tell you ?” 


ALL GOLD CANYON 


167 


He had no reel, nor any inclination to waste 
time, and by main strength, and swiftly, he drew 
out of the water a flashing ten-inch trout. Three 
more, caught in rapid succession, furnished his 
breakfast. When he came to the stepping-stones 
on his way to his hillside, he was struck by a sudden 
thought, and paused. 

“I’d just better take a hike down-stream a ways,” 
he said. “There’s no tellin’ what cuss may be 
snoopin’ around.” 

But he crossed over on the stones, and with a 
“I really oughter take that hike,” the need of the 
precaution passed out of his mind and he fell to 
work. 

At nightfall he straightened up. The small of 
his back was stiff* from stooping toil, and as he put 
his hand behind him to soothe the protesting mus- 
cles, he said : 

“Now what d’ye think of that, by damn? I 
clean forgot my dinner again ! If I don’t watch 
out, I’ll sure be degeneratin’ into a two-meal-a-day 
crank.” 

“Pockets is the damnedest things I ever see for 
makin’ a man absent-minded,” he communed that 


i68 


ALL GOLD CANYON 


night, as he crawled into his blankets. Nor did he 
forget to call up the hillside, “Good night, Mr. 
Pocket! Good night !” 

Rising with the sun, and snatching a hasty break- 
fast, he was early at work. A fever seemed to be 
growing in him, nor did the increasing richness of 
the test-pans allay this fever. There was a flush 
in his cheek other than that made by the heat of 
the sun, and he was oblivious to fatigue and the 
passage of time. When he filled a pan with dirt, 
he ran down the hill to wash it; nor could he for- 
bear running up the hill again, panting and stum- 
bling profanely, to refill the pan. 

He was now a hundred yards from the water, and 
the inverted “V” was assuming definite proportions. 
The width of the pay-dirt steadily decreased, and the 
man extended in his mind’s eye the sides of the 
“V” to their meeting-place far up the hill. This 
was his goal, the apex of the “V,” and he panned 
many times to locate it. 

“Just about two yards above that manzanita 
bush an’ a yard to the right,” he finally concluded. 

Then the temptation seized him. “As plain as 
the nose on your face,” he said, as he abandoned 


ALL GOLD CANYON 


169 


his laborious cross-cutting and climbed to the in- 
dicated apex. He filled a pan and carried it down 
the hill to wash. It contained no trace of gold. He 
dug deep, and he dug shallow, filling and washing 
a dozen pans, and was unrewarded even by the 
tiniest golden speck. He was enraged at having 
yielded to the temptation, and cursed himself 
blasphemously and pridelessly. Then he went 
down the hill and took up the cross-cutting. 

“Slow an’ certain, Bill; slow an’ certain,” he 
crooned. “Short-cuts to fortune ain’t in your 
line, an’ it’s about time you know it. Get wise, 
Bill; get wise. Slow an’ certain’s the only hand 
you can play; so go to it, an’ keep to it, ?o.” 

As the cross-cuts decreased, showing that the 
sides of the “V” were converging, the depth of the 
“V” increased. The gold-trace was dipping into 
the hill. It was only at thirty inches beneath the 
surface that he could get colors in his pan. The 
dirt he found at twenty-five inches from the surface, 
and at thirty-five inches, yielded barren pans. At 
the base of the “V,” by the water’s edge, he had 
found the gold colors at the grass roots. The higher 
he went up the hill, the deeper the gold dipped. 


ALL GOLD CANYON 


170 

To dig a hole three feet deep in order to get one 
test-pan was a task of no mean magnitude; while 
between the man and the apex intervened an un- 
told number of such holes to be dug. “An’ there’s 
no tellin’ how much deeper it ’ll pitch,” he sighed, 
in a moment’s pause, while his fingers soothed his 
aching back. 

Feverish with desire, with aching back and 
stiffening muscles, with pick and shovel gouging 
and mauling the soft brown earth, the man toiled 
up the hill. Before him was the smooth slope, 
spangled with flowers and made sweet with their 
breath. Behind him was devastation. It looked 
like son... terrible eruption breaking out on the 
smooth skin of the hill. His slow progress was like 
that of a slug, befouling beauty with a monstrous 
trail. 

Though the dipping gold-trace increased the 
man’s work, he found consolation in the increasing 
richness of the pans. Twenty cents, thirty cents, 
fifty cents, sixty cents, were the values of the gold 
found in the pans, and at nightfall he washed his 
banner pan, which gave him a dollar’s worth of 
gold-dust from a shovelful of dirt. 


ALL GOLD CANYON 


171 

“I’ll just bet it’s my luck to have some inquisi- 
tive cuss come buttin’ in here on my pasture,” he 
mumbled sleepily that night as he pulled the blankets 
up to his chin. 

Suddenly he sat upright. “Bill!” he called 
sharply. “Now, listen to me, Bill; d’ye hear! 
It’s up to you, to-morrow mornin’, to mosey round 
an’ see what you can see. Understand ? To- 
morrow morning, an’ don’t you forget it!” 

He yawned and glanced across at his side-hill. 
“Good night, Mr. Pocket,” he called. 

In the morning he stole a march on the sun, for 
he had finished breakfast when its first rays caught 
him, and he was climbing the wall of the canyon 
where it crumbled away and gave footing. From 
the outlook at the top he found himself in the midst 
of loneliness. As far as he could see, chain after 
chain of mountains heaved themselves into his 
vision. To the east his eyes, leaping the miles 
between range and range and between many ranges, 
brought up at last against the white-peaked 
Sierras — the main crest, where the backbone of 
the Western world reared itself against the sky. 
To the north and south he could see more distinctly 


172 


ALL GOLD CANYON 


the cross-systems that broke through the main trend 
of the sea of mountains. To the west the ranges 
fell away, one behind the other, diminishing and 
fading into the gentle foothills that, in turn, de- 
scended into the great valley which he could not see. 

And in all that mighty sweep of earth he saw no 
sign of man nor of the handiwork of man — save 
only the torn bosom of the hillside at his feet. 
The man looked long and carefully. Once, far 
down his own canyon, he thought he saw in the air 
a faint hint of smoke. He looked again and decided 
that it was the purple haze of the hills made dark 
by a convolution of the canyon wall at its back. 

“Hey, you, Mr. Pocket !” he called down into 
the canyon. “Stand out from under! Pm 
a-comin’, Mr. Pocket! Pm a-comin’ !” 

The heavy brogans on the man’s feet made him 
appear clumsy-footed, but he swung down from the 
giddy height as lightly and airily as a mountain 
goat. A rock, turning under his foot on the edge 
of the precipice, did not disconcert him. He seemed 
to know the precise time required for the turn to 
culminate in disaster, and in the meantime he 
utilized the false footing itself for the momentary 


ALL GOLD CANYON 


i73 


earth-contact necessary to carry him on into safety. 
Where the earth sloped so steeply that it was im- 
possible to stand for a second upright, the man did 
not hesitate. His foot pressed the impossible sur- 
face for but a fraction of the fatal second and gave 
him the bound that carried him onward. Again, 
where even the fraction of a second’s footing was 
out of the question, he would swing his body past 
by a moment’s hand-grip on a jutting knob of rock, 
a crevice, or a precariously rooted shrub. At last, 
with a wild leap and yell, he exchanged the /ace of 
the wall for an earth-slide and finished the descent 
in the midst of several tons of sliding earth and gravel. 

His first pan of the morning washed out over 
two dollars in coarse gold. It was from the centre 
of the “V.” To either side the diminution in the 
values of the pans was swift. His lines of cross- 
cutting holes were growing very short. The con- 
verging sides of the inverted “V” were only a few 
yards apart. Their meeting-point was only a few 
yards above him. But the pay-streak was dipping 
deeper and deeper into the earth. By early after- 
noon he was sinking the test-holes five feet before 
the pans could show the gold-trace. 


174 


ALL GOLD CANYON 


For that matter, the gold-trace had become some- 
thing more than a trace; it was a placer mine in 
itself, and the man resolved to come back after he 
had found the pocket and work over the ground. 
But the increasing richness of the pans began to 
worry him. By late afternoon the worth of the 
pans had grown to three and four dollars. The 
man scratched his head perplexedly and looked a 
few feet up the hill at the manzanita bush that 
marked approximately the apex of the “V.” He 
nodded his head and said oracularly: 

"It’s one o’ two things, Bill; one o’ two things. 
Either Mr. Pocket’s spilled himself all out an’ 
down the hill, or else Mr. Pocket’s that damned 
rich you maybe won’t be able to carry him all 
away with you. And that ’d be hell, wouldn’t it, 
now?” He chuckled at contemplation of so pleas- 
ant a dilemma. 

Nightfall found him by the edge of the stream, 
his eyes wrestling with the gathering darkness over 
the washing of a five-dollar pan. 

“Wisht I had an electric light to go on working,” 
he said. 

He found sleep difficult that night. Many times 


ALL GOLD CANYON 


*75 


he composed himself and closed his eyes for slumber 
to overtake him; but his blood pounded with too 
strong desire, and as many times his eyes opened 
and he murmured wearily, “Wisht it was sun-up.” 

Sleep came to him in the end, but his eyes were 
open with the first paling of the stars, and the gray 
of dawn caught him with breakfast finished and 
climbing the hillside in the direction of the secret 
abiding-place of Mr. Pocket. 

The first cross-cut the man made, there was space 
for only three holes, so narrow had become the pay- 
streak and so close was he to the fountainhead of 
the golden stream he had been following for four 
days. 

“Be ca’m, Bill; be ca’m,” he admonished him- 
self, as he broke ground for the final hole where the 
sides of the “V” had at last come together in a 
point. 

“I’ve got the almighty cinch on you, Mr. Pocket, 
an’ you can’t lose me,” he said many times as he 
sank the hole deeper and deeper. 

Four feet, five feet, six feet, he dug his way down 
into the earth. The digging grew harder. His 
pick grated on broken rock. He examined the rock. 


176 


ALL GOLD CANYON 


“ Rotten quartz,” was his conclusion as, with the 
shovel, he cleared the bottom of the hole of loose 
dirt. He attacked the crumbling quartz with the 
pick, bursting the disintegrating rock asunder with 
every stroke. 

He thrust his shovel into the loose mass. His 
eye caught a gleam of yellow. He dropped the shovel 
and squatted suddenly on his heels. As a farmer 
rubs the clinging earth from fresh-dug potatoes, so 
the man, a piece of rotten quartz held in both hands, 
rubbed the dirt away. 

“Sufferin' Sardanopolis !” he cried. “Lumps 
an' chunks of it! Lumps an' chunks of it!” 

It was only half rock he held in his hand. The 
other half was virgin gold. He dropped it into his 
pan and examined another piece. Little yellow was 
to be seen, but with his strong fingers he crumbled 
the rotten quartz away till both hands were filled 
with glowing yellow. He rubbed the dirt away 
from fragment after fragment, tossing them into the 
gold-pan. It was a treasure-hole. So much had 
the quartz rotted away that there was less of it 
than there was of gold. Now and again he found 
a piece to which no rock clung — a piece that was 


ALL GOLD CANYON 


177 


all gold. A chunk, where th^ pick had laid open 
the heart of the gold, glittered like a handful of 
yellow jewels, and he cocked his head at it and 
slowly turned it around and over to observe the 
rich play of the light upon it. 

“Talk about yer Too Much Gold diggin’s!” 
the man snorted contemptuously. “Why, this 
diggin’ ’d make it look like thirty cents. This 
diggin’ is All Gold. An’ right here an’ now I name 
this yere canyon ‘All Gold Canyon,’ b’ gosh!” 

Still squatting on his heels, he continued examining 
the fragments and tossing them into the pan. Sud- 
denly there came to him a premonition of danger. 
It seemed a shadow had fallen upon him. But 
there was no shadow. His heart had given a great 
jump up into his throat and was choking him. 
Then his blood slowly chilled and he felt the sweat 
of his shirt cold against his flesh. 

He did not spring up nor look around. He did 
not move. He was considering the nature of the 
premonition he had received, trying to locate the 
source of the mysterious force that had warned 
him, striving to sense the imperative presence of the 
unseen thing that threatened him. There is an aura 


N 


i 7 8 


ALL GOLD CANYON 


of things hostile, made manifest by messengers too 
refined for the senses to know; and this aura he 
felt, but knew not how he felt it. His was the feel- 
ing as when a cloud passes over the sun. It seemed 
that between him and life had passed something 
dark and smothering and menacing; a gloom, as 
it were, that swallowed up life and made for death 
— his death. 

Every force of his being impelled him to spring 
up and confront the unseen danger, but his soul 
dominated the panic, and he remained squatting 
on his heels, in his hands a chunk of gold. He 
did not dare to look around, but he knew by now 
that there was something behind him and above 
him. He made believe to be interested in the gold 
in his hand. He examined it critically, turned it 
over and over, and rubbed the dirt from it. And all 
the time he knew that something behind him was 
looking at the gold over his shoulder. 

Still feigning interest in the chunk of gold in his 
hand, he listened intently and he heard the breath- 
ing of the thing behind him. His eyes searched the 
ground in front of him for a weapon, but they saw 
only the uprooted gold, worthless to him now in 


ALL GOLD CANYON 


179 


his extremity. There was his pick, a handy weapon 
on occasion; but this was not such an occasion. 
The man realized his predicament. He was in a 
narrow hole that was seven feet deep. His head 
did not come to the surface of the ground. He was 
in a trap. 

He remained squatting on his heels. He was 
quite cool and collected; but his mind, considering 
every factor, showed him only his helplessness. 
He continued rubbing the dirt from the quartz 
fragments and throwing the gold into the pan. 
There was nothing else for him to do. Yet he 
knew that he would have to rise up, sooner or later, 
and face the danger that breathed at his back. 
The minutes passed, and with the passage of each 
minute he knew that by so much he was nearer 
the time when he must stand up, or else — and his 
wet shirt went cold against his flesh again at the 
thought — or else he might receive death as he 
stooped there over his treasure. 

Still he squatted on his heels, rubbing dirt from 
gold and debating in just what manner he should 
rise up. He might rise up with a rush and claw 
his way out of the hole to meet whatever threatened 


i8o 


ALL GOLD CANYON 


on the even footing above ground. Or he might 
rise up slowly and carelessly, and feign casually to 
discover the thing that breathed at his back. His 
instinct and every fighting fibre of his body favored 
the mad, clawing rush to the surface. His intellect, 
and the craft thereof, favored the slow and cautious 
meeting with the thing that menaced and which he 
could not see. And while he debated, a loud, crash- 
ing noise burst on his ear. At the same instant he 
received a stunning blow on the left side of the 
back, and from the point of impact felt a rush of 
flame through his flesh. He sprang up in the air, 
but halfway to his feet collapsed. His body crumpled 
in like a leaf withered in sudden heat, and he came 
down, his chest across his pan of gold, his face in 
the dirt and rock, his legs tangled and twisted be- 
cause of the restricted space at the bottom of the 
hole. His legs twitched convulsively several times. 
His body was shaken as with a mighty ague. There 
was a slow expansion of the lungs, accompanied by 
a deep sigh. Then the air was slowly, very slowly, 
exhaled, and his body as slowly flattened itself down 
into inertness. 

Above, revolver in hand, a man was peering down 


ALL GOLD CANYON 


181 


over the edge of the hole. He peered for a long 
time at the prone and motionless body beneath him. 
After a while the stranger sat down on the edge of 
the hole so that he could see into it, and rested the 
revolver on his knee. Reaching his hand into a 
pocket, he drew -out a wisp of brown paper. Into 
this he dropped a few crumbs of tobacco. The 
combination became a cigarette, brown and squat, 
with the ends turned in. Not once did he take his 
eyes from the body at the bottom of the hole. He 
lighted the cigarette and drew its smoke into his 
lungs with a caressing intake of the breath. He 
smok.J slowly. Once the cigarette went out and 
he relighted it. And all the while he studied the 
body beneath him. 

In the end he tossed the cigarette stub away and 
rose to his feet. He moved to the edge of the hole 
Spanning it, a hand resting on each edge, and with 
the revolver st : !l in the right hand, he muscled his 
body down mto the hole. While his feet were yet 
a yard from the bottom he released his hands and 
dropped down. 

At the instant his feet struck bottom he saw the 
pocket-miner’s arm leap out, and his own legs knew 


182 


ALL GOLD CANYON 


a swift, jerking grip that overthrew him. In the 
nature of the jump his revolver-hand was above his 
head. Swiftly as the grip had flashed about his 
legs, just as swiftly he brought the revolver down. 
He was still in the air, his fall in process of comple- 
tion, when he pulled the trigger. The explosion 
was deafening in the confined space. The smoke 
filled the hole so that he could see nothing. He 
struck the bottom on his back, and like a cat’s the 
pocket-miner’s body was on top of him. Even as 
the miner’s body passed on top, the stranger crooked 
in his right arm to fire; and even in that instant the 
miner, with a quick thrust of elbow, stru i his 
wrist. The muzzle was thrown up and the bullet 
thudded into the dirt of the side of the hole. 

The next instant the stranger felt the miner’s 
hand grip his wrist. The struggle was now for the 
revolver. Each man strove to turn it against the 
other’s body. The smoke in the hole was clear- 
ing. The stranger, lying on his back, was begin- 
ning to see dimly. But suddenly he was blinded 
by a handful of dirt deliberately flung into his eyes 
by his antagonist. In that moment of shock his 
grip on the revolver was broken. In the next 


ALL GOLD CANYON 


183 


moment he felt a smashing darkness descend upon 
his brain, and in the midst of the darkness even the 
darkness ceased. 

But the pocket-miner fired again and again, until 
the revolver was empty. Then he tossed it from 
him and, breathing heavily, sat down on the dead 
man’s legs. 

The miner was sobbing and struggling for breath. 
“ Measly skunk!” he panted; “a-campin’ on my 
trail an’ lettin’ me do the work, an’ then shootin’ 
me in the back!” 

He was half crying from anger and exhaustion. 
He peered at the face of the dead man. It was 
sprinkled with loose dirt and gravel, and it was 
difficult to distinguish the features. 

“ Never laid eyes on him before,” the miner con- 
cluded his scrutiny. “Just a common an’ ordinary 
thief, damn him ! An’ he shot me in the back ! 
He shot me in the back!” 

He opened his shirt and felt himself, front and 
back, on his left side. 

“Went clean through, and no harm done!” he 
cried jubilantly. “I’ll bet he aimed all right all 
right; but he drew the gun over when he pulled 


184 


ALL GOLD CANYON 


the trigger — the cuss ! But I fixed ’m ! Oh, I 
fixed ’m !” 

His fingers were investigating the bullet-hole in 
his side, and a shade of regret passed over his face. 
“It’s goin’ to be stiffer’n hell/’ he said. “An’ it’s 
up to me to get mended an’ get out o’ here.” 

He crawled out of the hole and went down the 
hill to his camp. Half an hour later he returned, 
leading his pack-horse. His open shirt disclosed 
the rude bandages with which he had dressed his 
wound. He was slow and awkward with his left- 
hand movements, but that did not prevent his 
using the arm. 

The bight of the pack-rope under the dead man’s 
shoulders enabled him to heave the body out of the 
hole. Then he set to work gathering up his gold. 
He worked steadily for several hours, pausing often 
to rest his stiffening shoulder and to exclaim : 

“He shot me in the back, the measly skunk ! He 
shot me in the back !” 

When his treasure was quite cleaned up and 
wrapped securely into a number of blanket-covered 
parcels, he made an estimate of its value. 

“Four hundred pounds, or I’m a Hottentot,” 


ALL GOLD CANYON 


185 

he concluded. “Say two hundred in quartz an’ 
dirt — that leaves two hundred pounds of gold. 
Bill ! Wake up ! Two hundred pounds of gold ! 
Forty thousand dollars ! An’ it’s yourn — all 
yourn !” 

He scratched his head delightedly and his fingers 
blundered into an unfamiliar groove. They quested 
along it for several inches. It was a crease through 
his scalp where the second bullet had ploughed. 

He walked angrily over to the dead man. 

“You would, would you?” he bullied. “You 
would, eh ? Well, I fixed you good an’ plenty, an’ 
I’ll give you decent burial, too. That’s more’n 
you’d have done for me.” 

He dragged the body to the edge of the hole and 
toppled it in. It struck the bottom with a dull 
crash, on its side, the face twisted up to the light. 
The miner peered down at it. 

“An’ you shot me in the back!” he said ac- 
cusingly. 

With pick and shovel he filled the hole. Then 
he loaded the gold on his horse. It was toe? - ^at 
a load for the animal, and when he had gaineu his 
camp he transferred part of it to his saddle-horse. 


1 86 


ALL GOLD CANYON 


Even so, he was compelled to abandon a portion of 
his outfit — pick and shovel and gold-pan, extra 
food and cooking utensils, and divers odds and 
ends. 

The sun was at the zenith when the man forced 
the horses at the screen of vines and creepers. To 
climb the huge boulders the animals were compelled 
to uprear and struggle blindly through the tangled 
mass of vegetation. Once the saddle-horse fell 
heavily and the man removed the pack to get the 
animal on its feet. After it started on its way again 
the man thrust his head out from among the leaves 
and peered up at the hillside. 

“The measly skunk !” he said, and disappeared. 

There was a ripping and tearing of vines and 
boughs. The trees surged back and forth, mark- 
ing the passage of the animals through the midst 
of them. There was a clashing of steel-shod hoofs 
on stone, and now and again an oath or a sharp 
cry of command. Then the voice of the man was 
raised in song: — 

“ Tu’n around an’ tu’n yo’ face 
Untoe them sweet hills of grace 
(D’ pow’rs of sin yo’ am scornm’ !). 


ALL GOLD CANYON 


187 


Look about an’ look aroun’, 

Fling yo’ sin-pack on (T groun’ 

(Yo’ will meet wid d’ Lord in d’ momin , !).” 

The song grew faint and fainter, and through the 
silence cr pt back the spirit of the place. The 
stream once more drowsed and whispered; the hum 
of the mountain bees rose sleepily. Down through 
the perfume-weighted air fluttered the snowy fluffs 
of the cottonwoods. The butterflies drifted in and 
out among the trees, and over all blazed the quiet 
sunshine. Only remained the hoof-marks in the 
meadow and the torn hillside to mark the boisterous 
trail of the life that had broken the peace of the 
place and passed on. 


. 


























PLANCHETTE 








PLANCHETTE 


I T is my right to know,” the girl said. 

Her voice was firm-fibred with determina- 
tion. There was no hint of pleading in it, 
yet it was the determination that is reached through 
a long period of pleading. But in her case it 
had been pleading, not of speech, but of per- 
sonality. Her lips had been ever mute, but her 
face and eyes, and the very attitude of her soul, 
had been for a long time eloquent with questioning. 
This the man had known, but he had never an- 
swered; and now she was demanding by the spoken 
word that he answer. 

“It is my right,” the girl repeated. 

“I know it,” he answered, desperately and help- 
lessly. 

She waited, in the silence which followed, her 
eyes fixed upon the light that filtered down through 
the lofty boughs and bathed the great redwood 
trunks in mellow warmth. This light, subdued and 


192 


PLANCHETTE 


colored, seemed almost a radiation from the trunks 
themselves, so strongly did they saturate it with 
their hue. The girl saw without seeing, as she 
heard, without hearing, the deep gurgling of the 
stream far below on the canyon bottom. 

She looked down at the man. “Well?” she 
asked, with the firmness which feigns belief that 
obedience will be forthcoming. 

She was sitting upright, her back against a fallen 
tree-trunk, while he lay near to her, on his side, an 
elbow on the ground and the hand supporting his 
head. 

“Dear, dear Lute,” he murmured. 

She shivered at the sound of his voice — not from 
repulsion, but from struggle against the fascination 
of its caressing gentleness. She had come to know 
well the lure of the man — the wealth of easement 
and rest that was promised by every caressing 
intonation of his voice, by the mere touch of hand 
on hand or the faint impact of his breath on neck 
or cheek. The man could not express himself by 
word nor look nor touch without weaving into the 
expression, subtly and occultly, the feeling as of a 
hand that passed and that in passing stroked softly 


PLANCHETTE 


I 93 


and soothingly. Nor was this all-pervading caress 
a something that cloyed with too great sweetness; 
nor was it sickly sentimental; nor was it maudlin 
with love’s madness. It was vigorous, compelling, 
masculine. For that matter, it was largely un- 
conscious on the man’s part. He was only dimly 
aware of it. It was a part of him, the breath of his 
soul as it were, involuntary and unpremeditated. 

But now, resolved and desperate, she steeled her- 
self against him. He tried to face her, but her gray 
eyes looked out to him, steadily, from under cool, 
level brows, and he dropped his head upon her 
knee. Her hand strayed into his hair softly, and 
her face melted into solicitude and tenderness. 
But when he looked up again, her gray eyes were 
steady, her brows cool and level. 

“What more can I tell you?” the man said. 
He raised his head and met her gaze. “I cannot 
marry you. I cannot marry any woman. I love 
you — you know that — better than my own life. 
I weigh you in the scales against all the dear things 
of living, and you outweigh everything. I would 
give everything to possess you, yet I may n . I 
cannot marry you. I can never marry you.” 


194 


PLANCHETTE 


Her lips were compressed with the effort of con- 
trol. His head was sinking back to her knee, when 
she checked him. 

“You are already married, Chris ?” 

“No! no!” he cried vehemently. “I have never 
been married. I want to marry only you, and I 
cannot !” 

“Then—” 

“Don’t!” he interrupted. “Don’t ask me!” 

“It is my right to know,” she repeated. 

“I know it,” he again interrupted. “But I can- 
not tell you.” 

“You have not considered me, Chris,” she went 
on gently. 

“I know, I know,” he broke in. 

“You cannot have considered me. You do not 
know what I have to bear from my people because 
of you.” 

“I did not think they felt so very unkindly toward 
me,” he said bitterly. 

“It is true. They can scarcely tolerate you. 
They do not show it to you, but they almost hate 
you. It is I who have had to bear all this. It 
was .ot always so, though. They liked you at first 


PLANCHETTE 


I 95 


as ... as I liked you. But that was four years 
ago. The time passed by — a year, two years ; 
and then they began to turn against you. They are 
not to be blamed. You spoke no word. They felt 
that you were destroying my life. It is four years, 
now, and you have never once mentioned marriage 
to them. What were they to think ? What they 
have thought, that you were destroying my life.” 

As she talked, she continued to pass her fingers 
caressingly through his hair, sorrowful for the pain 
that she was inflicti: r 

“They did like you at first. Who can help liking 
you ? You seem to draw affection from all living 
things, as the trees draw the moisture from the 
ground. It comes to you as it were your birth- 
right. Aunt Mildred and Uncle Robert thought 
there was nobody like you. The sun rose and set 
in you. They thought I was the luckiest girl alive 
to win the love of a man like you. ‘For it looks 
very much like it,’ Uncle Robert used to say, wagging 
his head wickedly at me. Of course they liked you. 
Aunt Mildred used to sigh, and look across teasingly 
at Uncle, and say, ‘When I think of Chris, it almost 
makes me wish I were younger myself/ And Uncle 


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would answer, ‘I don’t blame you, my dear, not in 
the least.’ And then the pair of them would beam 
upon me their congratulations that I had won the 
love of a man like you. 

“And they knew I loved you as well. How could 
I hide it ? — this great, wonderful thing that had 
entered into my life and swallowed up all my days ! 
For four years, Chris, I have lived only for you. 
Every moment was yours. Waking, I loved you. 
Sleeping, I dreamed of you. Every act I have 
performed was shaped by ; :*u, by the thought 
of you. Even my thoughts were moulded by 
you, by the invisible presence of you. I had no 
end, petty or great, that you were not there 
for me.” 

“I had no idea of imposing such slavery,” he 
muttered. 

“You imposed nothing. You always let me have 
my own way. It was you who were the obedient 
slave. You did for me without offending me. You 
forestalled my wishes without the semblance of fore- 
stalling them, so natural and inevitable was every- 
thing you did for me. I said, without offending 
me. You were no dancing puppet. You made 


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197 


no fuss. Don't you see? You did not seem to do 
things at all. Somehow they were always there, 
just done, as a matter of course. 

“The slavery was love’s slavery. It was just my 
love for you that made you swallow up all my days. 
You did not force yourself into my thoughts. You 
crept in, always, and you were there always — how 
much, you will never know. 

“But as time went by, Aunt Mildred and Uncle 
grew to dislike you. They grew afraid. What was 
to become of me ? You were destroying my life. 
My music ? You know how my dream of it has 
dimmed away. That spring, when I first met you 
— I was twenty, and I was about to start for Ger- 
many. I was going to study hard. That was four 
years ago, and I am still here in California. 

“I had other lovers. You drove them away — 
No ! no ! I don’t mean that. It was I that drove 
them away. What did I care for lovers, for any- 
thing, when you were near ? But as I said, Aunt 
Mildred and Uncle grew afraid. There has been 
talk — friends, busybodies, and all the rest. The 
time went by. You did not speak, I could only 
wonder, wonder. I knew you loved me. Much 


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198 

was said against you by Uncle at first, and then by 
Aunt Mildred. They were father and mother to 
me, you know. I could not defend you. Yet I 
was loyal to you. I refused to discuss you. I 
closed up. There was half-estrangement in my 
home — Uncle Robert with a face like an under- 
taker, and Aunt Mildred’s heart breaking. But 
what could I do, Chris ? What could I do ?” 

The man, his head resting on her knee again, 
groaned, but made no other reply. 

“Aunt Mildred was mother to me. Yet I went 
to her no more with my confidences. My child- 
hood’s book was closed. It was a sweet book, 
Chris. The tears come into my eyes sometimes 
when I think of it. But never mind that. Great 
happiness has been mine as well. I am glad I can 
talk frankly of my love for you. And the attaining 
of such frankness has been very sweet. I do love 
you, Chris. I love you ... I cannot tell you how. 
You are everything to me, and more besides. You 
remember that Christmas tree of the children ? — 
when we played blindman’s buff? and you caught 
me by the arm, so, with such a clutching of fingers 
that I cried out with the hurt ? I never told you, 


PLANCHETTE 


igg 


but the arm was badly bruised. And such sweet I 
got of it you could never guess. There, black and 
blue, was the imprint of your fingers — your fingers, 
Chris, your fingers. It was the touch of you made 
visible. It was there a week, and r kissed the 
marks — oh, so often ! I hated to see them go ; 
I wanted to rebruise the arm and make them 
linger. I was jealous of the returning white that 
drove the bruise away. Somehow, — oh ! I cannot 
explain, but I loved you so!” 

In the silence that fell, she continued her caressing 
of his hair, while she idly watched a great gray 
squirrel, boisterous and hilarious, as it scampered 
back and forth in a distant vista of the redwoods. 
A crimson-crested woodpecker, energetically drilling 
a fallen trunk, caught and transferred her gaze. 
The man did not lift his head. Rather, he crushed 
his face closer against her knee, while his heaving 
shoulders marked the hardness with which he 
breathed. 

“You must tell me, Chris,” the girl said gently. 
“This mystery — it is killing me. I must know why 
we cannot be married. Are we always to be this way ? 
— merely lovers, meeting often, it is true, and yet 


200 


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with the long absences between the meetings ? Is it 
all the world holds for you and me, Chris ? Are we 
never to be more to each other ? Oh, it is good just 
to love, I know — you have made me madly happy; 
but one dc" get so hungry at times for something 
more! I want more and more of you, Chris. I 
want all of you. I want all our days to be together. 
I want all the companionship, the comradeship, 
which cannot be ours now, and which will be ours 
when we are married — ” She caught her breath 
quickly. “But we are never to be married. I for- 
got. And you must tell me why.” 

The man raised his head and looked her in the 
eyes. It was a way he had with whomever he 
talked, of looking them in the eyes. 

“I have considered you, Lute,” he began doggedly. 
“I did consider you at the very first. I should 
never have gone on with it. I should have gone 
away. I knew it. And I considered you in the 
light of that knowledge, and yet ... I did not go 
away. My God ! what was I to do ? I loved you. 
I could not go away. I could not help it. I stayed. 
I resolved, but I broke my resolves. I was like a 
drunkard. I was drunk of you. I was weak, I 


PLANCHETTE 


201 


know. I failed. I could not go away. I tried. 
I went away — you will remember, though you did 
not know why. You know now. I went away, but 
I could not remain away. Knowing that we could 
never marry, I came back to you. I am here, now, 
with you. Send me away, Lute. I have not the 
strength to go myself. ,, 

“But why should you go away?” she asked. 
“Besides, I must know wh y, before I can send you 
away.” 

“Don’t ask me.” 

“Tell me,” she said, her voice tenderly im- 
perative. 

“Don’t, Lute; don’t force me,” the man pleaded, 
and there was appeal in his eyes and voice. 

“But you must tell me,” she insisted. “It is 
justice you owe me.” 

The man wavered. “If I do . . .” he began. 
Then he ended with determination, “I should never 
be able to forgive myself. No, I cannot tell you. 
Don’t try to compel me, Lute. You would be as 
sorry as I.” 

“If there is anything ... if there are obstacles 
. . . if this mystery does really prevent ...” She 


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was speaking slowly, with long pauses, seeking 
the more delicate ways of speech for the framing 
of her thought. “Chris, I do love you. I love 
you as deeply as it is possible for any woman to 
love, I am sure. If you were to say to me now 
‘Come/ I would go with you. I would follow 
wherever you led. I would be your page, as in 
the days of old when ladies went with their knights 
to far lands. You are my knight, Chris, and you 
can do no wrong. Your will is my wish. I was 
once afraid of the censure of the world. Now 
that you have come into my life I am no longer 
afraid. I would laugh at the world and its censure 
for your sake — for my sake too. I would laugh, 
for I should have you, and you are more to me than 
the good will and approval of the world. If you 
say ‘Come/ I will — ” 

“Don’t! Don’t!” he cried. “It is impossible! 
Marriage or not, I cannot even say ‘Come.’ I dare 
not. I’ll show you. I’ll tell you.” 

He sat up beside her, the action stamped with 
resolve. He took her hand in his and held it closely. 
His lips moved to the verge of speech. The mys- 
tery trembled for utterance. The air was palpitant 


PLANCHETTE 


203 


with its presence. As if it were an irrevocable 
decree, the girl steeled herself to hear. But the 
man paused, gazing straight out before him. She 
felt his hand relax in hers, and she pressed it 
sympathetically, encouragingly. But she felt the 
rigidity going out of his tensed body, and she knew 
that spirit and flesh were relaxing together. His 
resolution was ebbing. He would not speak — she 
knew it; and she knew, likewise, with the sureness 
of faith, that it was because he could not. 

She gazed despairingly before her, a numb feeling 
at her heart, as though hope and happiness had 
died. She watched the sun flickering down through 
the warm-trunked redwoods. But she watched in a 
mechanical, absent way. She looked at the scene as 
from a long way off, without interest, herself an 
alien, no longer an intimate part of the earth and 
trees and flowers she loved so well. 

So far removed did she seem, that she was aware 
of a curiosity, strangely impersonal, in what lay 
around her. Through a near vista she looked at a 
buckeye tree in full blossom as though her eyes 
encountered it for the first time. Her eyes paused 
and dwelt upon a yellow cluster of Diogenes’ lan- 


204 


PLANCHETTE 


terns that grew on the edge of an open space. It was 
the way of flowers always to give her quick pleasure- 
thrills, but no thrill was hers now. She pondered 
the flower slowly and thoughtfully, as a hasheesh- 
eater, heavy with the drug, might ponder some 
whim-flower that obtruded on his vision. In her 
ears was the voice of the stream — a hoarse-throated, 
sleepy old giant, muttering and mumbling his som- 
nolent fancies. But her fancy was not in turn 
aroused, as was its wont; she knew the sound merely 
for water rushing over the rocks of the deep canyon- 
bottom, that and nothing more. 

Her gaze wandered on beyond the Diogenes’ 
lanterns into the open space. Knee-deep in the 
wild oats of the hillside grazed two horses, chestnut- 
sorrels the pair of them, perfectly matched, warm 
and golden in the sunshine, their spring-coats a 
sheen of high-lights shot through with color-flashes 
that glowed like fiery jewels. She recognized, 
almost with a shock, that one of them was hers, 
Dolly, the companion of her girlhood and woman- 
hood, on whose neck she had sobbed her sorrows 
and sung her joys. A moistness welled into her 
eyes at the sight, and she came back from the 


PLANCHETTE 


205 


remoteness of her mood, quick with passion and 
sorrow, to be part of the world again. 

The man sank forward from the hips, relaxing 
entirely, and with a groan dropped his head on her 
knee. She leaned over him and pressed her lips 
softly and lingeringly to his hair. 

“ Come, let us go,” she said, almost in a 
whisper. 

She caught her breath in a half-sob, then tightened 
her lips as she rose. His face was white to ghastli- 
ness, so shaken was he by the struggle through 
which he had passed. They did not look at each 
other, but walked directly to the horses. She 
leaned against Dolly’s neck while he tightened the 
girths. Then she gathered the reins in her hand 
and waited. He looked at her as he bent down, an 
appeal for forgiveness in his eyes; and in that 
moment her own eyes answered. Her foot rested 
in his hands, and from there she vaulted into the 
saddle. Without speaking, without further looking 
at each other, they turned the horses’ heads and 
took the narrow trail that wound down through the 
sombre redwood aisles and across the open glades 
to the pasture-lands below. The trail became a 


206 


PLANCHETTE 


cow-path, the cow-path became a wood-road, which 
later joined with a hay-road; and they rode down 
through the low-rolling, tawny California hills to 
where a set of bars let out on the county road which 
ran along the bottom of the valley. The girl sat 
her horse while the man dismounted and began 
taking down the bars. 

“No — wait!” she cried, before he had touched 
the two lower bars. 

She urged the mare forward a couple of strides, 
and then the animal lifted over the bars in a clean 
little jump. The man’s eyes sparkled, and he 
clapped his hands. 

“You beauty! you beauty!” the girl cried, lean- 
ing forward impulsively in the saddle and pressing 
her cheek to the mare’s neck where it burned flame- 
color in the sun. 

“Let’s trade horses for the ride in,” she suggested, 
when he had led his horse through and finished 
putting up the bars. “You’ve never sufficiently 
appreciated Dolly.” 

“No, no,” he protested. 

“You think she is too old, too sedate,” Lute 
insisted. “She’s only sixteen, and she can outrun 


PLANCHETTE 


207 


nine colts out of ten. Only she never cuts up. 
She’s too steady, and you don’t approve of her — 
no, don’t deny it, sir. I know. And I know also 
that she can outrun your vaunted Washoe Ban. 
There ! I challenge you ! And furthermore, you 
may ride her yourself. You know what Ban can 
do; so you must ride Dolly and see for yourself 
what she can do.” 

They proceeded to exchange the saddles on the 
horses, glad of the diversion and making the most 
of it. 

“I’m glad I was born in California,” Lute re- 
marked, as she swung astride of Ban. “It’s an 
outrage both to horse and woman to ride in a side- 
saddle.” 

“You look like a young Amazon,” the man said 
approvingly, his eyes passing tenderly over the girl 
as she swung the horse around. 

“Are you ready ?” she asked. 

“All ready!” 

“To the old mill,” she called, as the horses sprang 
forward. “That’s less than a mile.” 

“To a finish ?” he demanded. 

She nodded, and the horses, feeling the urge of 


208 


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the reins, caught the spirit of the race. The dust 
rose in clouds behind as they tore along the level 
road. They swung around the bend, horses and 
riders tilted at sharp angles to the ground, and more 
than once the riders ducked low to escape the 
branches of outreaching and overhanging trees. 
They clattered over the small plank bridges, and 
thundered over the larger iron ones to an ominous 
clanking of loose rods. 

They rode side by side, saving the animals for 
the rush at the finish, yet putting them at a pace 
that drew upon vitality and staying power. Curving 
around a clump of white oaks, the road straightened 
out before them for several hundred yards, at the 
end of which they could see the ruined mill. 

“Now for it!” the girl cried. 

She urged the horse by suddenly leaning forward 
with her body, at the same time, for an instant, 
letting the rein slack and touching the neck with 
her bridle hand. She began to draw away from 
the man. 

“Touch her on the neck !” she cried to him. 

With this, the mare pulled alongside and began 
gradually to pass the girl. Chris and Lute looked at 


PLANCHETTE 


209 


each other for a moment, the mare still drawing 
ahead, so that Chris was compelled slowly to turn 
his head. The mill was a hundred yards away. 

“Shall I give him the spurs ?” Lute shouted. 

The man nodded, and the girl drove the spurs 
in sharply and quickly, calling upon the horse for 
its utmost, but watched her own horse forge slowly 
ahead of her. 

“Beaten by three lengths!” Lute beamed 
triumphantly, as they pulled into a walk. “Confess, 
sir, confess ! You didn’t think the old mare had it 
in her.” 

Lute leaned to the side and rested her hand for a 
moment on Dolly’s wet neck. 

“Ban’s a sluggard alongside of her,” Chris 
affirmed. “Dolly’s all right, if she is in her Indian 
Summer.” 

Lute nodded approval. “That’s a sweet way of 
putting it — Indian Summer. It just describes her. 
But she’s not lazy. She has all the fire and none 
of the folly. She is very wise, what of her years.” 

“That accounts for it,” Chris demurred. “Her 
folly passed with her youth. Many’s the lively 
time she’s given you.” 


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“No” Lute answered. “I never knew her really 
to cut up. I think the only trouble she ever gave 
me was when I was training her to open gates. 
She was afraid when they swung back upon her — 
the animal’s fear of the trap, perhaps. But she 
bravely got over it. And she never was vicious. 
She never bolted, nor bucked, nor cut up in all her 
life — never, not once.” 

The horses went on at a walk, still breathing 
heavily from their run. The road wound along 
the bottom of the valley, now and again crossing 
the stream. From either side rose the drowsy purr 
of mowing-machines, punctuated by occasional 
sharp cries of the men who were gathering the hay- 
crop. On the western side of the valley the hills 
rose green and dark, but the eastern side was already 
burned brown and tan by the sun. 

“There is summer, here is spring,” Lute said. 
“Oh, beautiful Sonoma Valley!” 

Her eyes were glistening and her face was radiant 
with love of the land. Her gaze wandered on across 
orchard patches and sweeping vineyard stretches, 
seeking out the purple which seemed to hang like 
a dim smoke in the wrinkles of the hills and in the 


PLANCHETTE 


211 


more distant canyon gorges. Far up, among the 
more rugged crests, where the steep slopes were 
covered with manzanita, she caught a glimpse of 
a clear space where the wild grass had not yet lost 
its green. 

“Have you ever heard of the secret pasture ?” 
she asked, her eyes still fixed on the remote green. 

A snort of fear brought her eyes back to the man 
beside her. Dolly, upreared, with distended nostrils 
and wild eyes, was pawing the air madly with her 
fore legs. Chris threw himself forward against her 
neck to keep her from falling backward, and at the 
same time touched her with the spurs to compel 
her to drop her fore feet to the ground in order to 
obey the go-ahead impulse of the spurs. 

“Why, Dolly, this is most remarkable, ” Lute 
began reprovingly. 

But, to her surprise, the mare threw her head down, 
arched her back as she went up in the air, and, re- 
turning, struck the ground stiff-legged and bunched. 

“A genuine buck!’’ Chris called out, and the 
next moment the mare was rising under him in a 
second buck. 

Lute looked on, astounded at the unprecedented 


212 


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conduct of her mare, and admiring her lover’s horse- 
manship. He was quite cool, and was himself 
evidently enjoying the performance. Again and 
again, half a dozen times, Dolly arched herself into 
the air and struck, stiffly bunched. Then she threw 
her head straight up and rose on her hind legs, 
pivoting about and striking with her fore feet. 
Lute whirled into safety the horse she was riding, 
and as she did so caught a glimpse of Dolly’s eyes, 
with the look in them of blind brute madness, 
bulging until it seemed they must burst from her 
head. The faint pink in the white of the eyes was 
gone, replaced by a white that was like dull marble 
and that yet flashed as from some inner fire. 

A faint cry of fear, suppressed in the instant of 
utterance, slipped past Lute’s lips. One hind leg 
of the mare seemed to collapse, and for a moment 
the whole quivering body, upreared and perpen- 
dicular, swayed back and forth, and there was 
uncertainty as to whether it would fall forward or 
backward. The man, half-slipping sidewise from 
the saddle, so as to fall clear if the mare toppled 
backward, threw his weight to the front and along- 
side her neck. This overcame the dangerous teeter- 


PLANCHETTE 


213 


ing balance, and the mare struck the ground on her 
feet again. 

But there was no let-up. Dolly straightened out 
so that the line of the face was almost a continuation 
of the line of the stretched neck ; this position enabled 
her to master the bit, which she did by bolting 
straight ahead down the road. 

For the first time Lute became really frightened. 
She spurred Washoe Ban in pursuit, but he could 
not hold his own with the mad mare, and dropped 
gradually behind. Lute saw Dolly check and rear 
in the air again, and caught up just as the mare 
made a second bolt. As Dolly dashed around a 
bend, she stopped suddenly, stiff-legged. Lute saw 
her lover torn out of the saddle, his thigh-grip broken 
by the sudden jerk. Though he had lost his seat, 
he had not been thrown, and as the mare dashed 
on Lute saw him clinging to the side of the horse, 
a hand in the mane and a leg across the saddle. 
With a quick effort he regained his seat and pro- 
ceeded to fight with the mare for control. 

But Dolly swerved from the road and dashed 
down a grassy slope yellowed with innumerable 
mariposa lilies. An ancient fence at the bottom 


214 


PLANCHETTE 


was no obstacle. She burst through as though it 
were filmy spider-web and disappeared in the under- 
brush. Lute followed unhesitatingly, putting Ban 
through the gap in the fence and plunging on into 
the thicket. She lay along his neck, closely, to 
escape the ripping and tearing of the trees and vines. 
She felt the horse drop down through leafy branches 
and into the cool gravel of a stream’s bottom. From 
ahead came a splashing of water, and she caught a 
glimpse of Dolly, dashing up the small bank and into 
a clump of scrub-oaks, against the trunks of which 
she was trying to scrape off her rider. 

Lute almost caught up amongst the trees, but 
was hopelessly outdistanced on the fallow field 
adjoining, across which the mare tore with a fine 
disregard for heavy ground and gopher-holes. 
When she turned at a sharp angle into the thicket- 
land beyond, Lute took the long diagonal, skirted 
the thicket, and reined in Ban at the other side. 
She had arrived first. From within the thicket she 
could hear a tremendous crashing of brush and 
branches. Then the mare burst through and into 
the open, falling to her knees, exhausted, on the 
soft earth. She arose and staggered forward, then 


PLANCHETTE 


215 


came limply to a halt. She was in a lather-sweat 
of fear, and stood trembling pitiably. 

Chris was still on her back. His shirt was in 
ribbons. The backs of his hands were bruised and 
lacerated, while his face was streaming blood from 
a gash near the temple. Lute had controlled her- 
self well, but now she was aware of a quick nausea 
and a trembling of weakness. 

“ Chris !” she said, so softly that it was almost a 
whisper. Then she sighed, “Thank God.” 

“Oh, I’m all right,” he cried to her, putting into 
his voice all the heartiness he could command, 
which was not much, for he had himself been under 
no mean nervous strain. 

He showed the reaction he was undergoing, when 
he swung down out of the saddle. He began with 
a brave muscular display as he lifted his leg over, 
but ended, on his feet, leaning against the limp 
Dolly for support. Lute flashed out of her saddle, 
and her arms were about him in an embrace of 
thankfulness. 

“I know where there is a spring,” she said, a 
moment later. 

They left the horses standing untethered, and she 


2l6 


PLANCHETTE 


led her lover into the cool recesses of the thicket to 
where crystal water bubbled from out the base of 
the mountain. 

“What was that you said about Dolly's never 
cutting up ? ” he asked, when the blood had 
been stanched and his nerves and pulse-beats were 
normal again. 

“I am stunned," Lute answered. “I cannot 
understand it. She never did anything like it in 
all her life. And all animals like you so — it's not 
because of that. Why, she is a child’s horse. I 
was only a little girl when I first rode her, and to 
this day — ’’ 

“Well, this day she was everything but a child’s 
horse,’’ Chris broke in. “She was a devil. She 
tried to scrape me off against the trees, and to batter 
my brains out against the limbs. She tried all the 
lowest and narrowest places she could find. You 
should have seen her squeeze through. And did 
you see those bucks?’’ 

Lute nodded. 

“Regular bucking-bronco proposition.’’ 

“But what should she know about bucking?’’ 
Lute demanded. “She was never known to buck 


— never. 


PLANCHETTE 


217 


He shrugged his shoulders. “Some forgotten 
instinct, perhaps, long-lapsed and come to life 
again.” 

The girl rose to her feet determinedly. “I’m 
going to find out,” she said. 

They went back to the horses, where they sub- 
jected Dolly to a rigid examination that disclosed 
nothing. Hoofs, legs, bit, mouth, body — every- 
thing was as it should be. The saddle and saddle- 
cloth were innocent of bur or sticker; the back was 
smooth and unbroken. They searched for sign of 
snake-bite and sting of fly or insect, but found 
nothing. 

“Whatever it was, it was subjective, that much 
is certain,” Chris said. 

“Obsession,” Lute suggested. 

They laughed together at the idea, for both were 
twentieth-century products, healthy-minded and 
normal, with souls that delighted in the butterfly- 
chase of ideals but that halted before the brink 
where superstition begins. 

“An evil spirit,” Chris laughed; “but what evil 
have I done that I should be so punished ?” 

“You think too much of yourself, sir,” she re- 


2l8 


PLANCHETTE 


joined. “It is more likely some evil, I don’t know 
what, that Dolly has done. You were a mere acci- 
dent. I might have been on her back at the time, 
or Aunt Mildred, or anybody.” 

As she talked, she took hold of the stirrup-strap 
and started to shorten it. 

“What are you doing ?” Chris demanded. 

“I’m going to ride Dolly in.” 

“No, you’re not,” he announced. “It would be 
bad discipline. After what has happened I am 
simply compelled to ride her in myself.” 

But it was a very weak and very sick mare he 
rode, stumbling and halting, afflicted with nervous 
jerks and recurring muscular spasms — the after- 
math of the tremendous orgasm through which she 
had passed. 

“I feel like a book of verse and a hammock, after 
all that has happened,” Lute said, as they rode 
into camp. 

It was a summer camp of city-tired people, pitched 
in a grove of towering redwoods through whose 
lofty boughs the sunshine trickled down, broken 
and subdued to soft light and cool shadow. Apart 
from the main camp were the kitchen and the 


PLANCHETTE 


219 


servants’ tents; and midway between was the 
great dining hall, walled by the living redwood 
columns, where fresh whispers of air were always 
to be found, and where no canopy was needed to 
keep the sun away. 

“Poor Dolly, she is really sick,” Lute said that 
evening, when they had returned from a last look 
at the mare. “But you weren’t hurt, Chris, and 
that’s enough for one small woman to be thankful 
for. I thought I knew, but I really did not know 
till to-day, how much you meant to me. I could 
hear only the plunging and struggle in the thicket. 
I could not see you, nor know how it went with 
you.” 

“My thoughts were of you,” Chris answered, and 
felt the responsive pressure of the hand that rested 
on his arm. 

She turned her face up to his and met his lips. 

“Good night,” she said. 

“Dear Lute, dear Lute,” he caressed her with 
his voice as she moved away among the shadows. 
******* 

“Who’s going for the mail?” called a woman’s 
voice through the trees. 


220 


PLANCHETTE 


Lute closed the book from which they had been 
reading, and sighed. 

“We weren’t going to ride to-day,” she said. 

“Let me go,” Chris proposed. “You stay here. 
I’ll be down and back in no time.” 

She shook her head. 

“Who’s going for the mail ?” the voice in- 
sisted. 

“Where’s Martin ?” Lute called, lifting her voice 
in answer. 

“I don’t know,” came the voice. “I think 
Robert took him along somewhere — horse-buying, 
or fishing, or I don’t know what. There’s really 
nobody left but Chris and you. Besides, it will give 
you an appetite for dinner. You’ve been lounging 
in the hammock all day. And Uncle Robert must 
have his newspaper.” 

“All right, Aunty, we’re starting,” Lute called 
back, getting out of the hammock. 

A few minutes later, in riding-clothes, they were 
saddling the horses. They rode out on to the 
county road, where blazed the afternoon sun, and 
turned toward Glen Ellen. The little town slept in 
the sun, and the somnolent storekeeper and post- 


PLANCHETTE 


221 


master scarcely kept his eyes open long enough to 
make up the packet of letters and newspapers. 

An hour later Lute and Chris turned aside from 
the road and dipped along a cow-path down the 
high bank to water the horses, before going into 
camp. 

“Dolly looks as though she’d forgotten all about 
yesterday,” Chris said, as they sat their horses 
knee-deep in the rushing water. “Look at her.” 

The mare had raised her head and cocked her 
ears at the rustling of a quail in the thicket. Chris 
leaned over and rubbed around her ears. Dolly’s 
enjoyment was evident, and she drooped her head 
over against the shoulder of his own horse. 

“Like a kitten,” was Lute’s comment. 

“Yet I shall never be able wholly to trust her 
again,” Chris said. “Not after yesterday’s mad 
freak.” 

“I have a feeling myself that you are safer on 
Ban,” Lute laughed. “It is strange. My trust in 
Dolly is as implicit as ever. I feel confident so far 
as I am concerned, but I should never care to see 
you on her back again. Now with Ban, my faith 
is still unshaken. Look at that neck! Isn’t he 


222 


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handsome ! He’ll be as wise as Dolly when he is 
as old as she.” 

“I feel the same way,” Chris laughed back. 
“Ban could never possibly betray me.” 

They turned their horses out of the stream. 
Dolly stopped to brush a fly from her knee with 
her nose, and Ban urged past into the narrow way 
of the path. The space was too restricted to make 
him return, save with much trouble, and Chris 
allowed him to go on. Lute, riding behind, dwelt 
with her eyes upon her lover’s back, pleasuring in 
the lines of the bare neck and the sweep out to the 
muscular shoulders. 

Suddenly she reined in her horse. She could 
do nothing but look, so brief was the duration 
of the happening. Beneath and above was the 
almost perpendicular bank. The path itself was 
barely wide enough for footing. Yet Washoe Ban, 
whirling and rearing at the same time, toppled foi; 
a moment in the air and fell backward off the 
path. 

So unexpected and so quick was it, that the man 
was involved in the fall. There had been no time 
for him to throw himself to the path. He was 


PLANCHETTE 


223 


falling ere he knew it, and he did the only thing 
possible — slipped the stirrups and threw his body 
into the air, to the side, and at the same time down. 
It was twelve feet to the rocks below. He main- 
tained an upright position, his head up and his eyes 
fixed on the horse above him and falling upon 
him. 

Chris struck like a cat, on his feet, on the instant 
making a leap to the side. The next instant Ban 
crashed down beside him. The animal struggled 
little, but sounded the terrible cry that horses some- 
times sound when they have received mortal hurt. 
He had struck almost squarely on his back, and in 
that position he remained, his head twisted partly 
under, his hind legs relaxed and motionless, his fore 
legs futilely striking the air. 

Chris looked up reassuringly. 

“I am getting used to it,” Lute smiled down to 
him. “Of course I need not ask if you are hurt. 
Can I do anything?” 

He smiled back and went over to the fallen beast, 
letting go the girths of the saddle and getting the 
head straightened out. 

“I thought so,” he said, after a cursory examina- 


224 


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tion. “I thought so at the time. Did you hear 
that sort of crunching snap?” 

She shuddered. 

“Well, that was the punctuation of life, the final 
period dropped at the end of Ban’s usefulness.” 
He started around to come up by the path. “I’ve 
been astride of Ban for the last time. Let us go 
home.” 

At the top of the bank Chris turned and looked 
down. 

“Good-by, Washoe Ban!” he called out. 
“Good-by, old fellow.” 

The animal was struggling to lift its head. There 
were tears in Chris’s eyes as he turned abruptly 
away, and tears in Lute’s eyes as they met his. 
She was silent in her sympathy, though the pressure 
of her hand was firm in his as he walked beside her 
horse down the dusty road. 

“It was done deliberately,” Chris burst forth 
suddenly. “There was no warning. He deliber- 
ately flung himself over backward.” 

“There was no warning,” Lute concurred. “I 
was looking. I saw him. He whirled and threw 
himself at the same time, just as if you had done it 


PLANCHETTE 


225 


yourself, with a tremendous jerk and backward pull 
on the bit.” 

“ It was not my hand, I swear it. I was not even 
thinking of him. He was going up with a fairly 
loose rein, as a matter of course.” 

“I should have seen it, had you done it,” Lute 
said. “But it was all done before you had a chance 
to do anything. It was not your hand, not even 
your unconscious hand.” 

“Then it was some invisible hand, reaching out 
from I don’t know where.” 

He looked up whimsically at the sky and smiled 
at the conceit. 

Martin stepped forward to receive Dolly, when 
they came into the stable end of the grove, but his 
face expressed no surprise at sight of Chris coming 
in on foot. Chris lingered behind Lute for a 
moment. 

“Can you shoot a horse?” he asked. 

The groom nodded, then added, “Yes, sir,” with 
a second and deeper nod. 

“How do you do it?” 

“Draw a line from the eyes to the ears — I mean 
the opposite ears, sir. And where the lines cross — ” 

Q 


226 


PLANCHETTE 


“That will do,” Chris interrupted. “You know 
the watering place at the second bend. You’ll find 
Ban there with a broken back.” 

* * He * * * * 

“Oh, here you are, sir. I have been looking for 
you everywhere since dinner. You are wanted 
immediately.” 

Chris tossed his cigar away, then went over and 
pressed his foot on its glowing fire. 

“You haven’t told anybody about it? — Ban?” 
he queried. 

Lute shook her head. “They’ll learn soon enough. 
Martin will mention it to Uncle Robert to-morrow.” 

“But don’t feel too bad about it,” she said, after 
a moment’s pause, slipping her hand into his. 

“He was my colt,” he said. “Nobody has ridden 
him but you. I broke him myself. I knew him 
from the time he was born. I knew every bit of 
him, every trick, every caper, and I would have 
staked my life that it was impossible for him to do 
a thing like this. There was no warning, no fight- 
ing for the bit, no previous unruliness. I have been 
thinking it over. He didn’t fight for the bit, for that 
matter. He wasn’t unruly, nor disobedient. There 


PLANCHETTE 


227 


wasn’t time. It was an impulse, and he acted 
upon it like lightning. I am astounded now at 
the swiftness with which it took place. Inside the 
first second we were over the edge and falling. 

“It was deliberate — deliberate suicide. And at- 
tempted murder. It was a trap. I was the victim. 
He had me, and he threw himself over with me. 
Yet he did not hate me. He loved me ... as 
much as it is possible for a horse to love. I am 
confounded. I cannot understand it any more than 
you can understand Dolly’s behavior yesterday.” 

“But horses go insane, Chris,” Lute said. “You 
know that. It’s merely coincidence that two 
horses in two days should have spells under you.” 

“That’s the only explanation,” he answered, 
starting off with her. “But why am I wanted 
urgently ?” 

“Planchette.” 

“Oh, I remember. It will be a new experience 
to me. Somehow I missed it when it was all the 
rage long ago.” 

“So did all of us,” Lute replied, “except Mrs. 
Grantly. It is her favorite phantom, it seems.” 

“A weird little thing,” he remarked. “Bundle 


228 


PLANCHETTE 


of nerves and fdack eyes. I’ll wager she doesn’t 
weigh ninety pounds, and most of that’s magnetism.” 

“Positively uncanny ... at times.” Lute shiv- 
ered involuntarily. “She gives me the creeps.” 

“Contact of the healthy with the morbid,” he 
explained dryly. “You will notice it is the healthy 
that always has the creeps. The morbid never has 
the creeps. It gives the creeps. That’s its function. 
Where did you people pick her up, anyway ?” 

“I don’t know — yes, I do, too. Aunt Mildred 
met her in Boston, I think — oh, I don’t know. 
At any rate, Mrs. Grantly came to California, and 
of course had to visit Aunt Mildred. You know 
the open house we keep.” 

They halted where a passageway between two 
great redwood trunks gave entrance to the dining 
room. Above, through lacing boughs, could be 
seen the stars. Candles lighted the tree-columned 
space. About the table, examining the Planchette 
contrivance, were four persons. Chris’s gaze roved 
over them, and he was aware of a guilty sorrow- 
pang as he paused for a moment on Lute’s Aunt 
Mildred and Uncle Robert, mellow with ripe middle 
age and genial with the gentle buffets life had dealt 


PLANCHETTE 


229 


them. He passed amusedly over the black-eyed, 
frail-bodied Mrs. Grantly, and halted on the fourth 
person, a portly, massive-headed man, whose gray 
temples belied the youthful solidity of his face. 

“Who’s that ?” Chris whispered. 

“A Mr. Barton. The train was late. That’s 
why you didn’t see him at dinner. He’s only a 
capitalist — water -power -long -distance- electricity - 
transmitter, or something like that.” 

“Doesn’t look as though he could give an ox 
points on imagination.” 

“He can’t. He inherited his money. But he 
knows enough to hold on to it and hire other men’s 
brains. He is very conservative.” 

“That is to be expected,” was Chris’s comment. 
His gaze went back to the man and woman who 
had been father and mother to the girl beside him. 
“Do you know,” he said, “it came to me with a 
shock yesterday when you told me that they had 
turned against me and that I was scarcely tolerated. 
I met them afterwards, last evening, guiltily, in fear 
and trembling — and to-day, too. And yet I could 
see no difference from of old.” 

“Dear man,” Lute sighed. “Hospitality is as 


230 


PLANCHETTE 


natural to them as the act of breathing. But it 
isn’t that, after all. It is all genuine in their dear 
hearts. No matter how severe the censure they put 
upon you when you are absent, the moment they 
are with you they soften and are all kindness and 
warmth. As soon as their eyes rest on you, affec- 
tion and love come bubbling up. You are so made. 
Every animal likes you. All people like you. They 
can’t help it. You can’t help it. You are uni- 
versally lovable, and the best of it is that you don’t 
know it. You don’t know it now. Even as I tell 
it to you, you don’t realize it, you won’t realize it 
— and that very incapacity to realize it is one of 
the reasons why you are so loved. You are in- 
credulous now, and you shake your head; but I 
know, who am your slave, as all people know, for 
they likewise are your slaves. 

“Why, in a minute we shall go in and join them. 
Mark the affection, almost maternal, that will well 
up in Aunt Mildred’s eyes. Listen to the tones of 
Uncle Robert’s voice when he says, ‘Well, Chris, 
my boy?’ Watch Mrs. Grantly melt, literally 
melt, like a dewdrop in the sun. 

“Take Mr. Barton, there. You have never 


PLANCHETTE 


231 


seen him before. Why, you will invite him out to 
smoke a cigar with you when the rest of us have 
gone to bed — you, a mere nobody, and he a man 
of many millions, a man of power, a man obtuse and 
stupid like the ox; and he will follow you about, 
smoking the cigar, like a little dog, your little dog, 
trotting at your back. He will not know he is doing 
it, but he will be doing it just the same. Don’t I 
know, Chris ? Oh, I have watched you, watched 
you, so often, and loved you for it, and loved you 
again for it, because you were so delightfully and 
blindly unaware of what you were doing.” 

“I’m almost bursting with vanity from listening 
to you,” he laughed, passing his arm around her 
and drawing her against him. 

“Yes,” she whispered, “and in this very moment, 
when you are laughing at all that I have said, you, 
the feel of you, your soul, — call it what you will, 
it is you, — is calling for all the love that is in me.” 

She leaned more closely against him, and sighed 
as with fatigue. He breathed a kiss into her hair 
and held her with firm tenderness. 

Aunt Mildred stirred briskly and looked up from 
the Planchette board. 


232 


PLANCHETTE 


“Come, let us begin,” she said. “It will soon 
grow chilly. Robert, where are those children ?” 

“Here we are,” Lute called out, disengaging her- 
self. 

“Now for a bundle of creeps,” Chris whispered, 
as they started in. 

Lute’s prophecy of the manner in which her lover 
would be received was realized. Mrs. Grantly, 
unreal, unhealthy, scintillant with frigid magnetism, 
warmed and melted as though of truth she were 
dew and he sun. Mr. Barton beamed broadly 
upon him, and was colossally gracious. Aunt 
Mildred greeted him with a glow of fondness and 
motherly kindness, while Uncle Robert genially 
and heartily demanded, “Well, Chris, my boy, and 
what of the riding ?” 

But Aunt Mildred drew her shawl more closely 
around her and hastened them to the business in 
hand. On the table was a sheet of paper. On the 
paper, riding on three supports, was a small tri- 
angular board. Two of the supports were easily 
moving casters. The third support, placed at the 
apex of the triangle, was a lead pencil. 

“Who’s first?” Uncle Robert demanded. 


PLANCHETTE 


233 


There was a moment’s hesitancy, then Aunt 
Mildred placed her hand on the board, and said : 
“Some one has always to be the fool for the delec- 
tation of the rest.” 

“ Brave woman,” applauded her husband. “ Now, 
Mrs. Grantly, do your worst.” 

“I?” that lady queried. “I do nothing. The 
power, or whatever you care to think it, is outside 
of me, as it is outside of all of you. As to what that 
power is, I will not dare to say. There is such a power. 
I have had evidences of it. And you will undoubt- 
edly have evidences of it. Now please be quiet, 
everybody. Touch the board very lightly, but 
firmly, Mrs. Story; but do nothing of your own 
volition.” 

Aunt Mildred nodded, and stood with her hand 
on Planchette; while the rest formed about her in 
a silent and expectant circle. But nothing hap- 
pened. The minutes ticked away, and Planchette 
remained motionless. 

“Be patient,” Mrs. Grantly counselled. “Do 
not struggle against any influences you may feel 
working on you. But do not do anything yourself. 
The influence will take care of that. You will feel 


234 


PLANCHETTE 


impelled to do things, and such impulses will be 
practically irresistible/’ 

“I wish the influence would hurry up,” Aunt 
Mildred protested at the end of five motionless 
minutes. 

“Just a little longer, Mrs. Story, just a little 
longer,” Mrs. Grantly said soothingly. 

Suddenly Aunt Mildred’s hand began to twitch 
into movement. A mild concern showed in her 
face as she observed the movement of her hand and 
heard the scratching of the pencil-point at the apex 
of Planchette. 

For another five minutes this continued, when 
Aunt Mildred withdrew her hand with an effort, 
and said, with a nervous laugh: 

“I don’t know whether I did it myself or not. 
I do know that I was growing nervous, standing 
there like a psychic fool with all your solemn faces 
turned upon me.” 

“Hen-scratches,” was Uncle Robert’s judgment, 
when he looked over the paper upon which she had 
scrawled. 

“Quite illegible,” was Mrs. Grantly’s dictum. 
“It does not resemble writing at all. The influences 


PLANCHETTE 


235 


have not got to working yet. Do you try it, Mr. 
Barton.” 

That gentleman stepped forward, ponderously 
willing to please, and placed his hand on the board. 
And for ten solid, stolid minutes he stood there, 
motionless, like a statue, the frozen personification 
of the commercial age. Uncle Robert’s face began 
to work. He blinked, stiffened his mouth, uttered 
suppressed, throaty sounds, deep down; finally he 
snorted, lost his self-control, and broke out in a 
roar of laughter. All joined in his merriment, 
including Mrs. Grantly. Mr. Barton laughed with 
them, but he was vaguely nettled. 

“You try it, Story,” he said. 

Uncle Robert, still laughing, and urged on by 
Lute and his wife, took the board. Suddenly his 
face sobered. His hand had begun to move, and 
the pencil could be heard scratching across the paper. 

“By George!” he muttered. “That’s curious. 
Look at it. I’m not doing it. I know I’m not doing 
it. Look at that hand go! Just look at it!” 

“Now, Robert, none of your ridiculousness,” 
his wife warned him. 

“I tell you I’m not doing it,” he replied indig- 


236 


PLANCHETTE 


nantly. “The force has got hold of me. Ask 
Mrs. Grantly. Tell her to make it stop, if you want 
it to stop. I can't stop it. By George ! look at 
that flourish. I didn't do that. I never wrote a 
flourish in my life." 

“Do try to be serious," Mrs. Grantly warned 
them. “An atmosphere of levity does not conduce 
to the best operation of Planchette." 

“There, that will do, I guess," Uncle Robert 
said as he took his hand away. “Now let's see." 

He bent over and adjusted his glasses. “It's 
handwriting at any rate, and that's better than the 
rest of you did. Here, Lute, your eyes are young." 

“Oh, what flourishes!" Lute exclaimed, as she 
looked at the paper. “And look there, there are 
two different handwritings." 

She began to read: “This is the first lecture. 
Concentrate on this sentence: ‘I am a positive spirit 
and not negative to any condition * Then follow 
with concentration on positive love. After that 
peace and harmony will vibrate through and around 
your body. T our soul — The other writing 
breaks right in. This is the way it goes: Bullfrog 
95, Dixie 16, Golden Anchor 65, Gold Mountain 13, 


PLANCHETTE 


237 


Jim Butler 70, Jumbo 75, North Star 42, Rescue 7, 
Black Butte 75, Brown Hope 16, Iron Top 3.” 

“Iron Top’s pretty low,” Mr. Barton murmured. 

“Robert, you’ve been dabbling again!” Aunt 
Mildred cried accusingly. 

“No, I’ve not,” he denied. “I only read the 
quotations. But how the devil — I beg your par- 
don — they got there on that piece of paper I’d 
like to know.” 

“Your subconscious mind,” Chris suggested. 
“You read the quotations in to-day’s paper.” 

“No, I didn’t; but last week I glanced over the 
column.” 

“A day or a year is all the same in the subconscious 
mind,” said Mrs. Grantly. “The subconscious 
mind never forgets. But I am not saying that 
this is due to the subconscious mind. I refuse to 
state to what I think it is due.” 

“But how about that other stuff?” Uncle Robert 
demanded. “Sounds like what I’d think Christian 
Science ought to sound like.” 

“Or theosophy,” Aunt Mildred volunteered. 
“Some message to a neophyte.” 

“Go on, read the rest,” her husband commanded. 


238 


PLANCHETTE 


“This puts you in touch with the mightier spirits” 
Lute read. “You shall become one with us, and 
your name shall be i Ary a, 9 and you shall — Con- 
queror 20, Empire 12, Columbia Mountain 18, Mid- 
way 140 — and, and that is all. Oh, no ! here’s 
a last flourish, Ary a, from Kandor — that must 
surely be the Mahatma.” 

“Pd like to have you explain that theosophy 
stuff on the basis of the subconscious mind, Chris,” 
Uncle Robert challenged. 

Chris shrugged his shoulders. “No explanation. 
You must have got a message intended for some one 
else.” 

“Lines were crossed, eh ?” Uncle Robert chuckled. 
“Multiplex spiritual wireless telegraphy, Pd call it.” 

“It is nonsense,” Mrs. Grantly said. “I never 
knew Planchette to behave so outrageously. There 
are disturbing influences at work. I felt them 
from the first. Perhaps it is because you are all 
making too much fun of it. You are too hilarious.” 

“A certain befitting gravity should grace the occa- 
sion,” Chris agreed, placing his hand on Planchette. 
“Let me try. And not one of you must laugh or 
giggle, or even think ‘laugh’ or ‘giggle.’ And if 


PLANCHETTE 


239 


you dare to snort, even once, Uncle Robert, there 
is no telling what occult vengeance may be wreaked 
upon you.” 

“Til be good,” Uncle Robert rejoined. “But 
if I really must snort, may I silently slip away ?” 

Chris nodded. His hand had already begun to 
work. There had been no preliminary twitchings 
nor tentative essays at writing. At once his hand 
had started off, and Planchette was moving swiftly 
and smoothly across the paper. 

“Look at him,” Lute whispered to her aunt. 
“See how white he is.” 

Chris betrayed disturbance at the sound of her 
voice, and thereafter silence was maintained. Only 
could be heard the steady scratching of the pencil. 
Suddenly, as though it had been stung, he jerked 
his hand away. With a sigh and a yawn he stepped 
back from the table, then glanced with the curiosity 
of a newly awakened man at their faces. 

“I think I wrote something,” he said. 

“I should say you did,” Mrs. Grantly remarked 
with satisfaction, holding up the sheet of paper 
and glancing at it. 

“Read it aloud,” Uncle Robert said. 


240 


PLANCHETTE 


“Here it is, then. It begins with 'beware’ 
written three times, and in much larger characters 
than the rest of the writing. BEWARE ! BE - 
WARE! BEWARE! Chris Dunbar , I intend to 
destroy you. I have already made two attempts 
upon your life , and failed. I shall yet succeed. So 
sure am I that I shall succeed that I dare to tell you. 
I do not need to tell you why. In your own heart 
you know. The wrong you are doing — And 
here it abruptly ends.” 

Mrs. Grantly laid the paper down on the table 
and looked at Chris, who had already become the 
centre of all eyes, and who was yawning as from an 
overpowering drowsiness. 

“Quite a sanguinary turn, I should say,” Uncle 
Robert remarked. 

“/ have already made two attempts upon your 
life” Mrs. Grantly read from the paper, which she 
was going over a second time. 

“On my life?” Chris demanded between yawns. 
“Why, my life hasn’t been attempted even once. 
My ! I am sleepy !” 

“Ah, my boy, you are thinking of flesh-and-blood 
men,” Uncle Robert laughed. “But this is a spirit. 


PLANCHETTE 


241 


Your life has been attempted by unseen things. 
Most likely ghostly hands have tried to throttle you 
in your sleep.” 

“Oh, Chris!” Lute cried impulsively. “This 
afternoon ! The hand you said must have seized 
your rein !” 

“But I was joking,” he objected. 

“Nevertheless ...” Lute left her thought un- 
spoken. 

Mrs. Grantly had become keen on the scent. 
“What was that about this afternoon ? Was your 
life in danger?” 

Chris’s drowsiness had disappeared. “I’m be- 
coming interested myself,” he acknowledged. “We 
haven’t said anything about it. Ban broke his 
back this afternoon. He threw himself off the bank, 
and I ran the risk of being caught underneath.” 

“I wonder, I wonder,” Mrs. Grantly communed 
aloud. “There is something in this. ... It is 
a warning. ... Ah ! You were hurt yesterday 
riding Miss Story’s horse ! That makes the two 
attempts !” 

She looked triumphantly at them. Planchette 
had been vindicated. 


242 


PLANCHETTE 


“Nonsense,” laughed Uncle Robert, but with a 
slight hint of irritation in his manner. 44 Such things 
do not happen these days. This is the twentieth 
century, my dear madam. The thing, at the very 
latest, smacks of medievalism.” 

44 1 have had such wonderful tests with Plan- 
chette,” Mrs. Grantly began, then broke off sud- 
denly to go to the table and place her hand on the 
board. 

44 Who are you?” she asked. 44 What is your 
name ?” 

The board immediately began to write. By this 
time all heads, with the exception of Mr. Barton’s, 
were bent over the table and following the pencil. 

44 It’s Dick,” Aunt Mildred cried, a note of the 
mildly hysterical in her voice. 

Her husband straightened up, his face for the first 
time grave. 

44 It’s Dick’s signature,” he said. 44 I’d know his 
fist in a thousand.” 

‘“Dick Curtis Mrs. Grantly read aloud. 44 Who 
is Dick Curtis?” 

44 By Jove, that’s remarkable!” Mr. Barton broke 
in. 44 The handwriting in both instances is the 


PLANCHETTE 


243 


same. Clever, I should say, really clever,” he 
added admiringly. 

“Let me see ,” Uncle Robert demanded, taking 
the paper and examining it. “Yes, it is Dick’s 
handwriting.” 

“But who is Dick?” Mrs. Grantly insisted. 
“Who is this Dick Curtis?” 

“Dick Curtis, why, he was Captain Richard Cur- 
tis,” Uncle Robert answered. 

“He was Lute’s father,” Aunt Mildred supple- 
mented. “Lute took our name. She never saw 
him. He died when she was a few weeks old. He 
was my brother.” 

“Remarkable, most remarkable.” Mrs. Grantly 
was revolving the message in her mind. “There 
were two attempts on Mr. Dunbar’s life. The sub- 
conscious mind cannot explain that, for none of us 
knew of the accident to-day.” 

“I knew,” Chris answered, “and it was I that 
operated Planchette. The explanation is simple.” 

“But the handwriting,” interposed Mr. Barton. 
“What you wrote and what Mrs. Grantly wrote are 
identical.” 

Chris bent over and compared the handwriting. 


244 


PLANCHETTE 


“ Besides,” Mrs. Grantly cried, “ Mr. Story recog- 
nizes the handwriting.” 

She looked at him for verification. 

He nodded his head. “Yes, it is Dick’s fist. 
I’ll swear to that.” 

But to Lute had come a visioning. While the 
rest argued pro and con and the air was filled with 
phrases, — “psychic phenomena,” “self-hypnotism,” 
“residuum of unexplained truth,” and “spiritism,” 
— she was reviving mentally the girlhood pictures 
she had conjured of this soldier-father she had 
never seen. She possessed his sword, there were 
several old-fashioned daguerreotypes, there was 
much that had been said of him, stories told of 
him — and all this had constituted the material out 
of which she had builded him in her childhood 
fancy. 

“There is the possibility of one mind uncon- 
sciously suggesting to another mind,” Mrs. Grantly 
was saying; but through Lute’s mind was trooping 
her father on his great roan war-horse. Now he 
was leading his men. She saw him on lonely scouts, 
or in the midst of the yelling Indians at Salt Meadows, 
when of his command he returned with one man 


PLANCHETTE 


245 


in ten. And in the picture she had of him, in the 
physical semblance she had made of him, was re- 
flected his spiritual nature, reflected by her wor- 
shipful artistry in form and feature and expression 
— his bravery, his quick temper, his impulsive 
championship, his madness of wrath in a righteous 
cause, his warm generosity and swift forgiveness, 
and his chivalry that epitomized codes and ideals 
primitive as the days of knighthood. And first, 
last, and always, dominating all, she saw in the 
face of him the hot passion and quickness of deed 
that had earned for him the name “Fighting Dick 
Curtis/’ 

“Let me put it to the test,” she heard Mrs. Grantly 
saying. “ Let Miss Story try Planchette. There 
may be a further message.” 

“No, no, I beg of you,” Aunt Mildred interposed. 
“It is too uncanny. It surely is wrong to tamper 
with the dead. Besides, I am nervous. Or, better, 
let me go to bed, leaving you to go on with your ex- 
periments. That will be the best way, and you 
can tell me in the morning.” Mingled with the 
“Good-nights,” were half-hearted protests from 
Mrs. Grantly, as Aunt Mildred withdrew. 


246 


PLANCHETTE 


“ Robert can return,” she called back, “as soon 
as he has seen me to my tent.” 

“It would be a shame to give it up now,” Mrs. 
Grantly said. “There is no telling what we are on 
the verge of. Won’t you try it, Miss Story?” 

Lute obeyed, but when she placed her hand on 
the board she was conscious of a vague and name- 
less fear at this toying with the supernatural. She 
was twentieth-century, and the thing in essence, as 
her uncle had said, was mediaeval. Yet she could 
not shake off the instinctive fear that arose in her 

— man’s inheritance from the wild and howling 
ages when his hairy, apelike prototype was afraid 
of the dark and personified the elements into things 
of fear. 

But as the mysterious influence seized her hand 
and sent it writing across the paper, all the unusual 
passed out of the situation and she was unaware of 
more than a feeble curiosity. For she was intent 
on another visioning — this time of her mother, 
who was also unremembered in the flesh. Not 
sharp and vivid like that of her father, but dim and 
nebulous was the picture she shaped of her mother 

— a saint’s head in an aureole of sweetness and 


PLANCHETTE 


247 


goodness and meekness, and withal, shot through 
with a hint of reposeful determination, of will, stub- 
born and unobtrusive, that in life had expressed 
itself mainly in resignation. 

Lute’s hand had ceased moving, and Mrs. Grantly 
was already reading the message that had been 
written. 

“It is a different handwriting,” she said. “A 
woman’s hand. ‘Martha,’ it is signed. Who is 
Martha?” 

Lute was not surprised. “It is my mother,” she 
said simply. “What does she say?” 

She had not been made sleepy, as Chris had; but 
the keen edge of her vitality had been blunted, and 
she was experiencing a sweet and pleasing lassitude. 
And while the message was being read, in her eyes 
persisted the vision of her mother. 

“Dear child” Mrs. Grantly read, “do not mind 
him. He was ever quick of speech and rash. Be no 
niggard with your love. Love cannot hurt you. To 
deny love is to sin. Obey your heart and you can 
do no wrong. Obey worldly considerations , obey 
pride , obey those that prompt you against your heart's 
prompting , and you do sin. Do not mind your 


248 


PLANCHETTE 


father. He is angry now , as was his way in 
the earth-life ; but he will come to see the wisdom of 
my counsel , for this , too , was his way in the earth- 
life. Love , my child , and love well. — Martha.” 

“Let me see it,” Lute cried, seizing the paper 
and devouring the handwriting with her eyes. She 
was thrilling with unexpressed love for the mother 
she had never seen, and this written speech from 
the grave seemed to give more tangibility to her 
having ever existed, than did the vision of her. 

“This is remarkable,” Mrs. Grantly was reiterat- 
ing. “There was never anything like it. Think 
of it, my dear, both your father and mother here 
with us to-night.” 

Lute shivered. The lassitude was gone, and she 
was her natural self again, vibrant with the instinc- 
tive fear of things unseen. And it was offensive 
to her mind that, real or illusion, the presence or 
the memoried existences of her father and mother 
should be touched by these two persons who were 
practically strangers — Mrs. Grantly, unhealthy and 
morbid, and Mr. Barton, stolid and stupid with 
a grossness both of the flesh and the spirit. And 
it further seemed a trespass that these strangers 


PLANCHETTE 


249 


should thus enter into the intimacy between her 
and Chris. 

She could hear the steps of her uncle approaching, 
and the situation flashed upon her, luminous and 
clear. She hurriedly folded the sheet of paper and 
thrust it into her bosom. 

“Don’t say anything to him about this second 
message, Mrs. Grantly, please, and Mr. Barton. 
Nor to Aunt Mildred. It would only cause them 
irritation and needless anxiety.” 

In her mind there was also the desire to protect 
her lover, for she knew that the strain of his present 
standing with her aunt and uncle would be added 
to, unconsciously in their minds, by the weird mes- 
sage of Planchette. 

“And please don’t let us have any more Plan- 
chette,” Lute continued hastily. “ Let us forget 
all the nonsense that has occurred.” 

“'Nonsense,’ my dear child?” Mrs. Grantly was 
indignantly protesting when Uncle Robert strode 
into the circle. 

“Hello!” he demanded. “What’s being done?” 

“Too late,” Lute answered lightly. “No more 
stock quotations for you. Planchette is adjourned, 


250 


PLANCHETTE 


and we’re just winding up the discussion of the 
theory of it. Do you know how late it is ?” 

S*c ***** * 

“Well, what did you do last night after we left ?” 

“Oh, took a stroll,” Chris answered. 

Lute’s eyes were quizzical as she asked with a 
tentativeness that was palpably assumed, “With 
— a — with Mr. Barton ?” 

“Why, yes.” 

“And a smoke?” 

“Yes; and now what’s it all about?” 

Lute broke into merry laughter. “Just as I 
told you that you would do. Am I not a prophet ? 
But I knew before I saw you that my forecast had 
come true. I have just left Mr. Barton, and I knew 
he had walked with you last night, for he is vowing by 
all his fetishes and idols that you are a perfectly 
splendid young man. I could see it with my eyes 
shut. The Chris Dunbar glamour has fallen upon 
him. But I have not finished the catechism, by any 
means. Where have you been all morning ?” 

“Where I am going to take you this afternoon.” 

“You plan well without knowing my wishes.” 

“I knew well what your wishes are. It is to see 
a horse I have found.” 


PLANCHETTE 


2 5i 


Her voice betrayed her delight, as she cried, 
"Oh, good !” 

"He is a beauty,” Chris said. 

But her face had suddenly gone grave, and appre- 
hension brooded in her eyes. 

"He’s called Comanche,” Chris went on. "A 
beauty, a regular beauty, the perfect type of the 
Californian cow-pony. And his lines — why, what’s 
the matter?” 

"Don’t let us ride any more,” Lute said, "at 
least for a while. Really, I think I am a tiny bit 
tired of it, too.” 

He was looking at her in astonishment, and she 
was bravely meeting his eyes. 

" I see hearses and flowers for you,” he began, “ and 
a funeral oration ; I see the end of the world, and the 
stars falling out of the sky, and the heavens rolling up 
as a scroll; I see the living and the dead gathered 
together for the final judgment, the sheep and the 
goats, the lambs and the rams and all the rest of it, 
the white-robed saints, the sound of golden harps, 
and the lost souls howling as they fall into the Pit — 
all this I see on the day that you, Lute Story, no longer 
care to ride a horse. A horse, Lute! a horse!” 


252 


PLANCHETTE 


“For a while, at least,” she pleaded. 

“Ridiculous!” he cried. “What’s the matter? 
Aren’t you well ? — you who are always so abomi- 
nably and adorably well!” 

“No, it’s not that,” she answered. “I know it 
is ridiculous, Chris, I know it, but the doubt will 
arise. I cannot help it. You always say I am so 
sanely rooted to the earth and reality and all that, 
but — perhaps it’s superstition, I don’t know — 
but the whole occurrence, the messages of Planchette, 
the possibility of my father’s hand, I know not how, 
reaching out to Ban’s rein and hurling him and you 
to death, the correspondence between my father’s 
statement that he has twice attempted your life and 
the fact that in the last two days your life has twice 
been endangered by horses — my father was a great 
horseman — all this, I say, causes the doubt to 
arise in my mind. What if there be something in 
it ? I am not so sure. Science may be too dog- 
matic in its denial of the unseen. The forces of 
the unseen, of the spirit, may well be too subtle, 
too sublimated, for science to lay hold of, and recog- 
nize, and formulate. Don’t you see, Chris, that 
there is rationality in the very doubt ? It may be 


PLANCHETTE 


2 53 


a very small doubt — oh, so small ; but I love you 
too much to run even that slight risk. Besides, I 
am a woman, and that should in itself fully account 
for my predisposition toward superstition. 

“Yes, yes, I know, call it unreality. But I've 
heard you paradoxing upon the reality of the un- 
real — the reality of delusion to the mind that is 
sick. And so with me, if you will; it is delusion 
and unreal, but to me, constituted as I am, it is very 
real — is real as a nightmare is real, in the throes 
of it, before one awakes.” 

“The most logical argument for illogic I have 
ever heard,” Chris smiled. “It is a good gaming 
proposition, at any rate. You manage to embrace 
more chances in your philosophy than do I in mine. 
It reminds me of Sam — the gardener you had a 
couple of years ago. I overheard him and Martin 
arguing in the stable. You know what a bigoted 
atheist Martin is. Well, Martin had deluged Sam 
with floods of logic. Sam pondered awhile, and 
then he said, ‘Foh a fack, Mis’ Martin, you jis' 
tawk like a house afire; but you ain't got de show 
I has.' ‘How's that?' Martin asked. ‘Well, you 
see, Mis' Martin, you has one chance to mah two.' 


254 


PLANCHETTE 


‘I don’t see it/ Martin said. ‘Mis’ Martin, it’s 
dis way. You has jis’ de chance, lak you say, to 
become worms foh de fruitification of de cabbage 
garden. But I’s got de chance to lip mah voice to 
de glory of de Lawd as I go paddin’ dem golden 
streets — along ’ith de chance to be jis’ worms 
along ’ith you, Mis’ Martin.’” 

“You refuse to take me seriously,” Lute said, 
when she had laughed her appreciation. 

“How can I take that Planchette rigmarole 
seriously?” he asked. 

“You don’t explain it — the handwriting of my 
father, which Uncle Robert recognized — oh, the 
whole thing, you don’t explain it.” 

“I don’t know all the mysteries of mind,” Chris 
answered. “But I believe such phenomena will 
all yield to scientific explanation in the not dis- 
tant future.” 

“Just the same, I have a sneaking desire to find 
out some more from Planchette,” Lute confessed. 
“The board is still down in the dining room. We 
could try it now, you and I, and no one would know.” 

Chris caught her hand, crying: “Come on! It 
will be a lark.” 


PLANCHETTE 


2 55 


Hand in hand they ran down the path to the tree- 
pillared room. 

“The camp is deserted,” Lute said, as she placed 
Planchette on the table. “Mrs. Grantly and Aunt 
Mildred are lying down, and Mr. Barton has gone off 
with Uncle Robert. There is nobody to disturb us.” 
She placed her hand on the board. “Now begin.” 

For a few minutes nothing happened. Chris 
started to speak, but she hushed him to silence. 
The preliminary twitchings had appeared in her hand 
and arm. Then the pencil began to write. They 
read the message, word by word, as it was written : 

There is wisdom greater than the wisdom of reason . 
Love proceeds not out of the dry-as-dust way of the 
mind . Love is of the heart , and is beyond all reason , 
and logic , and philosophy. Trust your own hearty 
my daughter. And if your heart bids you have 
faith in your lover , then laugh at the mind and its 
cold wisdomy and obey your hearty and have faith 
in your lover. — Martha. 

“But that whole message is the dictate of your 
own heart,” Chris cried. “Don’t you see, Lute? 
The thought is your very own, and your subcon- 
scious mind has expressed it there on the paper.” 


PLANCHETTE 


256 

“But there is one thing I don’t see,” she objected. 

“And that?” 

“Is the handwriting. Look at it. It does not 
resemble mine at all. It is mincing, it is old-fash- 
ioned, it is the old-fashioned feminine of a generation 
ago.” 

“But you don’t mean to tell me that you really 
believe that this is a message from the dead ?” he 
interrupted. 

“I don’t know, Chris,” she wavered. “I am 
sure I don’t know.” 

“It is absurd!” he cried. “These are cobwebs 
of fancy. When one dies, he is dead. He is dust. 
He goes to the worms, as Martin says. The dead ? 
I laugh at the dead. They do not exist. They are 
not. I defy the powers of the grave, the men dead 
and dust and gone ! 

“And what have you to say to that?” he chal- 
lenged, placing his hand on Planchette. 

On the instant his hand began to write. Both 
were startled by the suddenness of it. The message 
was brief : 


BEWARE ! BEWARE! BEWARE! 


PLANCHETTE 


257 


He was distinctly sobered, but he laughed. “ It 
is like a miracle play. Death we have, speaking 
to us from the grave. But Good Deeds, where art 
thou ? And Kindred ? and Joy ? and Household 
Goods ? and Friendship ? and all the goodly com- 
pany ?” 

But Lute did not share his bravado. Her fright 
showed itself in her face. She laid her trembling 
hand on his arm. 

“Oh, Chris, let us stop. I am sorry we began it. 
Let us leave the quiet dead to their rest. It is 
wrong. It must be wrong. I confess I am affected 
by it. I cannot help it. As my body is trembling, 
so is my soul. This speech of the grave, this dead 
man reaching out from the mould of a generation 
to protect me from you. There is reason in it. 
There is the living mystery that prevents you from 
marrying me. Were my father alive, he would pro- 
tect me from you. Dead, he still strives to protect 
me. His hands, his ghostly hands, are against your 
life !” 

“Do be calm,” Chris said soothingly. “Listen 
to me. It is all a lark. We are playing with the 
subjective forces of our own being, with phenomena 


PLANCHETTE 


258 

which science has not yet explained, that is all. 
Psychology is so young a science. The subcon- 
scious mind has just been discovered, one might 
say. It is all mystery as yet; the laws of it are yet 
to be formulated. This is simply unexplained 
phenomena. But that is no reason that we should 
immediately account for it by labelling it spiritism. 
As yet we do not know, that is all. As for Plan- 
chette — ” 

He abruptly ceased, for at that moment, to en- 
force his remark, he had placed his hand on Plan- 
chette, and at that moment his hand had been seized, 
as by a paroxysm, and sent dashing, willy-nilly, 
across the paper, writing as the hand of an angry 
person would write. 

“No, I don’t care for any more of it,” Lute said, 
when the message was completed. “It is like wit- 
nessing a fight between you and my father in the 
flesh. There is the savor in it of struggle and 
blows.” 

She pointed out a sentence that read: You 
cannot escape me nor the just punishment that is 
yours ! 

“Perhaps I visualize too vividly for my own com- 


PLANCHETTE 


2 59 


fort, for I can see his hands at your throat. I know 
that he is, as you say, dead and dust, but for all 
that, I can see him as a man that is alive and walks 
the earth; I see the anger in his face, the anger 
and the vengeance, and I see it all directed against 
you.” 

She crumpled up the scrawled sheets of paper, 
and put Planchette away. 

“We won't bother with it any more,” Chris said. 
“I didn’t think it would affect you so strongly. 
But it’s all subjective, I’m sure, with possibly a 
bit of suggestion thrown in — that and nothing 
more. And the whole strain of our situation has 
made conditions unusually favorable for striking 
phenomena.” 

“And about our situation,” Lute said, as they 
went slowly up the path they had run down. “What 
we are to do, I don’t know. Are we to go on, as 
we have gone on ? What is best ? Have you thought 
of anything?” 

He debated for a few steps. “I have thought 
of telling your uncle and aunt.” 

“What you couldn’t tell me?” she asked quickly. 

“No,” he answered slowly; “but just as much 


26 o 


PLANCHETTE 


as I have told you. I have no right to tell them 
more than I have told you .” 

This time it was she that debated. “No, don’t 
tell them,” she said finally. “They wouldn’t under- 
stand. I don’t understand, for that matter, but I 
have faith in you, and in the nature of things they 
are not capable of this same implicit faith. You 
raise up before me a mystery that prevents our 
marriage, and I believe you; but they could not 
believe you without doubts arising as to the wrong 
and ill-nature of the mystery. Besides, it would 
but make their anxieties greater.” 

“I should go away, I know I should go away,” 
he said, half under his breath. “And I can. I 
am no weakling. Because I have failed to remain 
away once, is no reason that I shall fail again.” 

She caught her breath with a quick gasp. “It 
is like a bereavement to hear you speak of going 
away and remaining away. I should never see 
you again. It is too terrible. And do not reproach 
yourself for weakness. It is I who am to blame. 
It is I who prevented you from remaining away 
before, I know. I wanted you so. I want you so. 

“There is nothing to be done, Chris, nothing to 


PLANCHETTE 


261 


be done but to go on with it and let it work itself 
out somehow. That is one thing we are sure of : 
it will work out somehow.” 

“But it would be easier if I went away,” he 
suggested. 

“I am happier when you are here.” 

“The cruelty of circumstance, ’’ he muttered 
savagely. 

“Go or stay — that will be part of the working out. 
But I do not want you to go, Chris ; you know that. 
And now no more about it. Talk cannot mend it. 
Let us never mention it again — unless . . . unless 
some time, some wonderful, happy time, you can 
come to me and say: ‘Lute, all is well with me. 
The mystery no longer binds me. I am free.’ 
Until that time let us bury it, along with Planchette 
and all the rest, and make the most of the little that 
is given us. 

“And now, to show you how prepared I am to 
make the most of that little, I am even ready to go 
with you this afternoon to see the horse — though 
I wish you wouldn’t ride any more ... for a few 
days, anyway, or for a week. What did you say 
was his name?” 


262 


PLANCHETTE 


“Comanche,” he answered. “I know you will 
like him.” 

* * * * * * * 

Chris lay on his back, his head propped by the 
bare jutting wall of stone, his gaze attentively 
directed across the canyon to the opposing tree- 
covered slope. There was a sound of crashing 
through underbrush, the ringing of steel-shod hoofs 
on stone, and an occasional and mossy descent of 
a dislodged boulder that bounded from the hill 
and fetched up with a final splash in the torrent 
that rushed over a wild chaos of rocks beneath him. 
Now and again he caught glimpses, framed in green 
foliage, of the golden brown of Lute’s corduroy 
riding-habit and of the bay horse that moved 
beneath her. 

She rode out into an open space where a loose 
earth-slide denied lodgement to trees and grass. 
She halted the horse at the brink of the slide and 
glanced down it with a measuring eye. Forty 
feet beneath, the slide terminated in a small, firm- 
surfaced terrace, the banked accumulation of fallen 
earth and gravel. 

“It’s a good test,” she called across the canyon. 
“I’m going to put him down it.” 


PLANCHETTE 


263 


The animal gingerly launched himself on the 
treacherous footing, irregularly losing and gain- 
ing his hind feet, keeping his fore legs stiff, and 
steadily and calmly, without panic or nervousness, 
extricating the fore feet as fast as they sank too deep 
into the sliding earth that surged along in a wave 
before him. When the firm footing at the bottom 
was reached, he strode out on the little terrace with 
a quickness and springiness of gait and with glint- 
ings of muscular fires that gave the lie to the calm 
deliberation of his movements on the slide. 

“ Bravo!” Chris shouted across the canyon, clap- 
ping his hands. 

“The wisest-footed, clearest-headed horse I ever 
saw,” Lute called back, as she turned the animal 
to the side and dropped down a broken slope of 
rubble and into the trees again. 

Chris followed her by the sound of her progress, 
and by occasional glimpses where the foliage was 
more open, as she zigzagged down the steep and 
trailless descent. She emerged below him at the 
rugged rim of the torrent, dropped the horse down 
a three-foot wall, and halted to study the crossing. 

Four feet out in the stream, a narrow ledge thrust 


264 


PLANCHETTE 


above the surface of the water. Beyond the ledge 
boiled an angry pool. But to the left, from the 
ledge, and several feet lower, was a tiny bed of 
gravel. A giant boulder prevented direct access 
to the gravel bed. The only way to gain it was 
by first leaping to the ledge of rock. She studied 
it carefully, and the tightening of her bridle-arm 
advertised that she had made up her mind. 

Chris, in his anxiety, had sat up to observe more 
closely what she meditated. 

“Don’t tackle it,” he called. 

“I have faith in Comanche,” she called in return. 

“He can’t make that side-jump to the gravel,” 
Chris warned. “He’ll never keep his legs. He’ll 
topple over into the pool. Not one horse in a thou- 
sand could do that stunt.” 

“And Comanche is that very horse,” she answered. 
“Watch him.” 

She gave the animal his head, and he leaped 
cleanly and accurately to the ledge, striking with 
feet close together on the narrow space. On the 
instant he struck, Lute lightly touched his neck 
with the rein, impelling him to the left; and in that 
instant, tottering on the insecure footing, with front 


PLANCHETTE 


265 


feet slipping over into the pool beyond, he lifted on 
his hind legs, with a half turn, sprang to the left, 
and dropped squarely down to the tiny gravel 
bed. An easy jump brought him across the stream, 
and Lute angled him up the bank and halted be- 
fore her lover. 

“Well?” she asked. 

“I am all tense,” Chris answered. “I was hold- 
ing my breath.” 

“ Buy him, by all means,” Lute said, dismounting. 
“He is a bargain. I could dare anything on him. 
I never in my life had such confidence in a horse’s 
feet.” 

“ His owner says that he has never been known to 
lose his feet, that it is impossible to get him down.” 

“Buy him, buy him at once,” she counselled, 
“before the man changes his mind. If you don’t, 
I shall. Oh, such feet ! I feel such confidence in 
them that when I am on him I don’t consider he has 
feet at all. And he’s quick as a cat, and instantly 
obedient. Bridle-wise is no name for it ! You 
could guide him with silken threads. Oh, I know 
I’m enthusiastic, but if you don’t buy him, Chris, 
I shall. Remember, I’ve second refusal.” 


266 


PLANCHETTE 


Chris smiled agreement as he changed the saddles. 
Meanwhile she compared the two horses. 

“Of course he doesn’t match Dolly the way Ban 
did,” she concluded regretfully; “but his coat is 
splendid just the same. And think of the horse that 
is under the coat!” 

Chris gave her a hand into the saddle, and fol- 
lowed her up the slope to the county road. She 
reined in suddenly, saying: 

“We won’t go straight back to camp.” 

“You forget dinner,” he warned. 

“But I remember Comanche,” she retorted. 
“We’ll ride directly over to the ranch and buy him. 
Dinner will keep.” 

“But the cook won’t,” Chris laughed. “She’s 
already threatened to leave, what of our late- 
comings.” 

“Even so,” was the answer. “Aunt Mildred 
may have to get another cook, but at any rate we 
shall have got Comanche.” 

They turned the horses in the other direction, 
and took the climb of the Nun Canyon road that 
led over the divide and down into the Napa Valley. 
But the climb was hard, the going was slow. Some- 


PLANCHETTE 


267 


times they topped the bed of the torrent by hun- 
dreds of feet, and again they dipped down and 
crossed and recrossed it twenty times in twice as 
many rods. They rode through the deep shade of 
clean-trunked maples and towering redwoods, to 
emerge on open stretches of mountain shoulder 
where the earth lay dry and cracked under the sun. 

On one such shoulder they emerged, where the 
road stretched level before them, for a quarter of 
a mile. On one side rose the huge bulk of the 
mountain. On the other side the steep wall of the 
canyon fell away in impossible slopes and sheer 
drops to the torrent at the bottom. It was an abyss 
of green beauty and shady depths, pierced by va- 
grant shafts of the sun and mottled here. and there 
by the sun's broader blazes. The sound of rushing 
water ascended on the windless air, and there was 
a hum of mountain bees. 

The horses broke into an easy lope. Chris rode 
on the outside, looking down into the great depths 
and pleasuring with his eyes in what he saw. Dis- 
sociating itself from the murmur of the bees, a 
murmur arose of falling water. It grew louder 
with every stride of the horses. 


268 


PLANCHETTE 


“Look!” he cried. 

Lute leaned well out from her horse to see. Be- 
neath them the water slid foaming down a smooth- 
faced rock to the lip, whence it leaped clear — a 
pulsating ribbon of white, a-breath with movement, 
ever falling and ever remaining, changing its sub- 
stance but never its form, an aerial waterway as 
immaterial as gauze and as permanent as the hills, 
that spanned space and the free air from the lip of 
the rock to the tops of the trees far below, into whose 
green screen it disappeared to fall into a secret 
pool. 

They had flashed past. The descending water 
became a distant murmur that merged again into 
the murmur of the bees and ceased. Swayed by a 
common impulse, they looked at each other. 

“Oh, Chris, it is good to be alive . . . and to 
have you here by my side!” 

He answered her by the warm light in his eyes. 

All things tended to key them to an exquisite 
pitch — the movement of their bodies, at one with 
the moving bodies of the animals beneath them; 
the gently stimulated blood caressing the flesh 
through and through with the soft vigors of health; 


PLANCHETTE 


269 


the warm air fanning their faces, flowing over the 
skin with balmy and tonic touch, permeating them 
and bathing them, subtly, with faint, sensuous 
delight; and the beauty of the world, more subtly 
still, flowing upon them and bathing them in the 
delight that is of the spirit and is personal and holy, 
that is inexpressible yet communicable by the flash 
of an eye and the dissolving of the veils of the soul. 

So looked they at each other, the horses bounding 
beneath them, the spring of the world and the 
spring of their youth astir in their blood, the secret 
of being trembling in their eyes to the brink of 
disclosure, as if about to dispel, with one magic 
word, all the irks and riddles of existence. 

The road curved before them, so that the upper 
reaches of the canyon could be seen, the distant 
bed of it towering high above their heads. They 
were rounding the curve, leaning toward the inside, 
gazing before them at the swift-growing picture. 
There was no sound of warning. She heard nothing, 
but even before the horse went down she experienced 
the feeling that the unison of the two leaping animals 
was broken. She turned her head, and so quickly 
that she saw Comanche fall. It was not a stumble 


270 


PLANCHETTE 


nor a trip. He fell as though, abruptly, in mid- 
leap, he had died or been struck a stunning blow. 

And in that moment she remembered Planchette; 
it seared her brain as a lightning-flash of all-embrac- 
ing memory. Her horse was back on its haunches, 
the weight of her body on the reins; but her head 
was turned and her eyes were on the falling Co- 
manche. He struck the road-bed squarely, with 
his legs loose and lifeless beneath him. 

It all occurred in one of those age-long seconds 
that embrace an eternity of happening. There 
was a slight but perceptible rebound from the im- 
pact of Comanche’s body with the earth. The vio- 
lence with which he struck forced the air from his 
great lungs in an audible groan. His momentum 
swept him onward and over the edge. The weight 
of the rider on his neck turned him over head first 
as he pitched to the fall. 

She was off her horse, she knew not how, and to 
the edge. Her lover was out of the saddle and 
clear of Comanche, though held to the animal by 
his right foot, which was caught in the stirrup. 
The slope was too steep for them to come to a stop. 
Earth and small stones, dislodged by their struggles, 


PLANCHETTE 


271 


were rolling down with them and before them in 
a miniature avalanche. She stood very quietly, 
holding one hand against her heart and gazing 
down. But while she saw the real happening, in 
her eyes was also the vision of her father dealing 
the spectral blow that had smashed Comanche down 
in mid-leap and sent horse and rider hurtling over 
the edge. 

Beneath horse and man the steep terminated in 
an up-and-down wall, from the base of which, in 
turn, a second slope ran down to a second wall. 
A third slope terminated in a final wall that based 
itself on the canyon-bed four hundred feet beneath 
the point where the girl stood and watched. She 
could see Chris vainly kicking his leg to free the foot 
from the trap of the stirrup. Comanche fetched 
up hard against an out-jutting point of rock. For 
a fraction of a second his fall was stopped, and in 
the slight interval the man managed to grip hold 
of a young shoot of manzanita. Lute saw him 
complete the grip with his other hand. Then 
Comanche's fall began again. She saw the stirrup- 
strap draw taut, then her lover's body and arms. 
The manzanita shoot yielded its roots, and horse 


272 


PLANCHETTE 


and man plunged over the edge and out of 
sight. 

They came into view on the next slope, together 
and rolling over and over, with sometimes the man 
under and sometimes the horse. Chris no longer 
struggled, and together they dashed over to the third 
slope. Near the edge of the final wall, Comanche 
lodged on a hummock of stone. He lay quietly, 
and near him, still attached to him by the stirrup, 
face downward, lay his rider. 

“If only he will lie quietly/’ Lute breathed aloud, 
her mind at work on the means of rescue. 

But she saw Comanche begin to struggle again, 
and clear on her vision, it seemed, was the spectral 
arm of her father clutching the reins and dragging 
the animal over. Comanche floundered across the 
hummock, the inert body following, and together, 
horse and man, they plunged from sight. They 
did not appear again. They had fetched bottom. 

Lute looked about her. She stood alone on the 
world. Her lover was gone. There was naught to 
show of his existence, save the marks of Comanche’s 
hoofs on the road and of his body where it had slid 
over the brink. 


PLANCHETTE 


273 

“ Chris !” she called once, and twice; but she 
called hopelessly. 

Out of the depths, on the windless air, arose only 
the murmur of bees and of running water. 

“ Chris !” she called yet a third time, and sank 
slowly down in the dust of the road. 

She felt the touch of Dolly’s muzzle on her arm, 
and she leaned her head against the mare’s neck 
and waited. She knew not why she waited, nor for 
what, only there seemed nothing else but waiting 
left for her to do. 










4 



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WORKS BY JACK LONDON 


WHITE FANG 

With Illustrations and Decorations in Color by Charles Livingston Bull 
Cloth 12mo $1.50 

Mr. London’s new novel is the biggest and most elemental book of its 
kind that has appeared since “ The Call of the Wild.” Its theme is the ex- 
act opposite of “ The Call of the Wild,” — the gradual taming of a wolf, from 
the time when he hovers round a dog-sledge in the frozen north, through the 
long months of his gradual ac< option of the ways and habits of man-animals. 
It is one of the most thrilli- md dramatic stories that Mr. London has yet 
written. 


Tales of the Fish Patrol 

With Illustrations by George Varian 

Cloth 12mo $1.50 

“ These are good and vigorous stories, made yet more interesting by the 
fact that their theme is comparatively fresh and unfamiliar.” 

— Richmond Tima- Dispatch. 

« That they are vividly told hardly need be said, for Jack London is a real- 
ist as well as a writer of thrilling romances.” — Cleveland Plain Dealer. 

“They are good stories of adventure to which the background of truth 
lends additional interest.” — Toledo Daily Blade. 


THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

64-66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK 


WORKS BY JACK LONDON 


THE GAME 

A TRANSCRIPT FROM REAL LIFE 
With illustrations in color by HENRY HUTT 
Cloth 12mo $1.50 

“ One cannot read the story without a thrilling, sympathetic interest. . . . 
The story is done with such a fine mingling of freedom and reserve, in lines so 
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the events are actually happening before the reader.” — The New York Herald. 

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and virile as a sculptor’s model of the ideal athlete.” — The Boston Herald. 


WAR OF THE CLASSES 

Cloth 12mo $1.50, net 

Paper 12mo 25 cents, net 

“ Mr. London’s book is thoroughly interesting, and Mr. London’s point ot 
view is, as may be surmised, very different from that of the closet theorist.” — 
Springfield Republican. 

“ His clear and incisive thinking arrests attention — on many points carries 
conviction — and on the whole illuminates its subject.” — Chicago Record- 
Herald. 

“ The book is worth thoughtful consideration.” — Congregationalist. 

“ The statements of this book are as bare and bold as the story of the ‘ Sea- 
Wolf,’ and present the socialists’ and laborers’ side of the economic situation 
with vigor, clearness, and impressiveness.” — The Watchman. 


THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

64-66 Fifth Avenue, New York 


WORKS BT JACK LONDON 


THE SEA-WOLF 

With illustrations by W. J. Aylward 

Cloth 12 mo $1.50 

“ ‘ The Sea-Wolf,’ Jack London’s latest novel of adventure, is one 
that every reader with good red blood in his veins will hail with 
delight. There is no fumbling of the trigger here, no nervous and 
uncertain sighting along the barrel, but the quick decisive aim and 
the bull’s-eye every time.” — Mail and Express, New York. 

“Jack London’s ‘The Sea-Wolf’ is marvellously truthful. . . . 
Reading it through at a sitting, we have found it poignantly interest- 
ing . . . a superb piece of craftsmanship.” — The New York Tribune. 

“ Exciting, original, fascinating. . . . Novel and pleasing. . . . 
So original, vivid, and daring that it commands attention." 

— Chicago Record-Herald. 

THE CALL OF THE WILD 

With illustrations in color by Philip R. Goodwin and Charles 
Livingston Bull 

Decorated by Charles Edward Hooper 

Cloth 12mo $1.50 

“ A big story in sober English and with thorough art in the con- 
struction; a wonderfully perfect bit of work; a book that will be 
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ing.” — The New York Sun. 

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of the story, the strong, sweeping strokes with which the pictures of 
the northern wilds and the life therein are painted by the narrator, 
and the insight given into the soul of the primitive in nature. . . . 
More than that, it is one of the very best stories of the year, and one 
that will not be forgotten.” — The Plain Dealer , Cleveland. 

“The story is one that will stir the blood of every lover of a life 
in its closest relation to nature. Whoever loves the open or adven- 
ture for its own sake will find ‘ The Call of the Wild ’ a most fasci- 
nating book.” — The Brooklyn Eagle. 


THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

64—66- Fifth Avenue, New York 


WORKS BT JACK LONDON 


THE FAITH OF MEN 

And Other Stories 

Cloth 12 mo $1.50 

“ Mr. London’s art as a story-teller nowhere manifests itself more 
strongly than in the swift, dramatic close of his stories. There is no 
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THE CHILDREN OF THE FROST 

With illustrations by Raphael M. Reay 

Cloth 12 mo $1.50 

“ Told with something of that same vigorous and honest manli- 
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direct and unfailing appeal to the sympathy of his reader.” 

— Richmond Dispatch. 

THE PEOPLE OF THE ABYSS 

With many illustrations from photographs 

Cloth 12mo $1.50 net 

“ Mr. London’s book is a powerful presentation of a repellent 
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— Nashville News. 

THE KEMPTON-WACE LETTERS 

By JACK LONDON and ANNA STRUNSKY 
Cloth 12 mo $1.50 

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classic on the subject of love." 

— Edwin Markham, Westerleigh, Staten Island, N.Y. 


THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 


64—66 Fifth Avenue, New York 


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